Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Michael Maniaci on the bright outlook for hospital-at-home programs.

Digital Health

Medallion Sets Sights On Tackling Administrative Burden

Healthcare costs are climbing, burnout is at an all-time high, and new data arrives on a daily basis highlighting the heavy toll that administrative burdens are placing on the workers making care delivery possible. Each of those issues is wildly complex, which is why Medallion is setting out to automate away the cumbersome operational processes at the core of the complexity.

CMS’ just-released 2022 National Health Expenditures helps set the stage by wrapping some numbers around the size of these challenges:

• US healthcare spending grew 4.1% last year to reach $4.5 trillion, outpacing the 3.2% increase seen in 2021. The two largest slices of that pie belong to hospital care (30% share) and physician services (20%), largely due to the massive amount of administrative and operational overhead that goes into care delivery.

• That same administrative overhead is placing a huge weight on providers and operations teams, with CDC figures now showing that 46% of healthcare workers are struggling with burnout (up from 32% in 2018).

Medallion tackles this administrative burden with an end-to-end provider network management platform, which streamlines time consuming and repetitive tasks like credentialing, licensing, and payor contracting and enrollment.

• The credentialing solution automatically performs primary source verifications, checks state licenses and board certifications, and provides alerts on provider eligibility changes to eliminate manual reviews and ensure regulatory compliance.

• The licensing solution simplifies cross-state licensing and license renewals to help keep up with ever-evolving state requirements, as well as continuing education tracking in all 50 states.

• The payor contracting and enrollment solution allows organizations to offload the payor negotiation process from start to finish, then solves the problem of getting providers in-network with enrollment services for any commercial and government payor.

• All of that information is housed in a provider data management dashboard that serves as a centralized view of the provider network, improving oversight and slashing operations task time.

The Takeaway

The healthcare industry has its work cut out for it reigning in administrative costs and burnout, but platforms like Medallion help make sure that the work filling the plates of providers and digital health companies is actually advancing their mission instead of distracting from it. Make sure to schedule a demo here to check out Medallion in action.

The New Standard for Prescription Safety

Synapse Medicine’s quick-deploy Prescription Assistance API and components can be up and running in less than a day and instantly connect your HCPs to real-time drug data and prescribing support. Find out how easy it can be to equip your providers with the tools they need to ensure prescription safety and precision for their patients.

Four Ways to Connect Fragmented Provider Data

Automation is transforming our industry, and Medallion is digging into the ripple effect that fragmented provider data has on healthcare organizations. Check out Medallion’s open access E-Book to gain a better understanding of data management models and strategies, uncover solutions that will streamline operational tasks from provider onboarding to license renewals, and much more.

Clinical Support, Whenever It’s Needed

connectRN makes working and staffing in Home Health even more flexible, empowering clinicians to decide when to work and supporting staffers with talented clinical help whenever it’s needed. Secure talented and qualified clinical support with connectRN.

The Wire

• TEFCA Goes Live: It’s a milestone week for interoperability, with the ONC officially announcing that the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (otherwise known as TEFCA) is now operational. The primary goal of TEFCA is to establish a universal policy for network-to-network health information sharing, and the go-live means that the first batch of Qualified Health Information Networks have finally received their long-awaited QHIN designations. Major congratulations to Health Gorilla, Epic Nexus, eHealth Exchange, KONZA, and MedAllies.

• Top 8 Hospital-at-Home Programs: Becker’s published a behind-the-scenes look at the country’s top eight hospital-at-home programs by average daily patient volume. The program administrators at each system share quick samples of their secret sauce, as well as lessons learned while spinning up their home care units. The largest operations currently range from NC-based Atrium Health with 45 patients/day, to MO-based Saint Luke’s with 10 patients/day.

• Abridge Adds SCAN Funding: Ambient AI standout Abridge followed up its recent $30M Series B round with an undisclosed amount of funding from SCAN Group, which was apparently the first health plan to offer Abridge’s services back in 2021. The latest funding caps a busy year that included Abridge getting brought on as the first startup in Epic’s Partners and Pals program, as well as a streak of health system implementation at UPMC, Emory Healthcare, and University of Kansas Health System.

• Healthcare Costs Pace Inflation: Turquoise Health’s 2023 Year in Review found that CMS’ basket of 500 “shoppable services” kept pace with inflation this year, with costs climbing 2% from Q1 to the end of Q3 (vs. 1.9% US inflation). What was more surprising is that Turquoise recorded 14.6 million changes to the cost of those services throughout the year, and that’s only at large hospitals with 500+ beds. These changes can happen for a number of reasons, including renegotiations or auto-escalation clauses within contracts.

• New Google Foundation Model: Hot off the launch of its Gemini multimodal LLM, Google upped the ante yet again with the debut of MedLM, a new family of foundation models fine-tuned for healthcare use cases. MedLM was built on top of Med-Palm2 and comes in two distinct flavors: a larger version optimal for complex workflows, and a medium version best used for “scaling across tasks.” Several partners have already been hands-on with MedLM and are now moving it into production within their solutions, including Augmedix, HCA Healthcare, and Accenture.

• Twin Health Series D: Twin Health secured $50M in Series D funding to expand its Whole Body Twin Technology aimed at delivering personalized lifestyle recommendations to manage metabolic conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Twin equips its users with connected devices (continuous glucose monitor, heart rate smartwatch, blood pressure sensors) and an app for logging how they feel (symptoms, energy level, mood), then performs quarterly blood tests to round out the digital twin of their metabolic system that fuels the recommendation engine.

• GLP-1s Safe For Pregnancy: Taking GLP-1s for type 2 diabetes during pregnancy doesn’t pose more risk to the fetus compared to insulin treatment, according to a large JAMA Internal Medicine study of 52k pregnant women with T2D (one third taking non-insulin treatments). Infants born to mothers with T2D have a 5.5% incidence of significant birth defects (vs. a baseline of 3.7%), and exposure to insulin in utero increases the risk to 7.8%. GLP-1s and other anti-diabetic drugs increased the risk of defects as well, but not to a significantly larger degree. 

• Best Buy Partners With Biobeat: Best Buy Health is teaming up with RPM company Biobeat to incorporate its advanced monitoring wearables into the Current Health platform. Biobeat’s monitors provide continuous readings of 13 health parameters, including cuffless blood pressure, pulse, respiration, blood and oxygen saturation. That data will then integrate with the Current’s care-at-home platform, enabling care teams to monitor patients across a wider variety of conditions and acuity levels.

• Self-Scheduling Mammograms: Letting patients schedule their own screening mammograms through their EHR portal led to a big increase in breast screenings. In a study in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, UPenn researchers analyzed screening and completion rates for 35k patient visits both before and after a self-scheduling EHR feature was added for women that had a clinician referral. Self-scheduling led to a 15 percentage point leap in mammogram completion rates, and the overall screening rate more than doubled (50% vs. 22%).

• Veradigm Cleans House: Veradigm, the health IT giant formerly known as Allscripts, fired its CEO and CFO as it battles an ongoing lawsuit from investors alleging that it overstated its revenue by upwards of $20M. The company’s current director, Shih-Yin Ho, is taking over as interim CEO as the search begins for permanent replacements. The lawsuit details sound pretty damning, and Veradigm appears to be on the verge of getting delisted from the Nasdaq after failing to file its annual report for 2022 and every quarterly report so far this year.

• 2023 CVD Almanac: The 2023 Cardiovascular Disease Almanac was just released, and the numbers weren’t pretty. The world saw 19.8M CVD deaths in 2022, a massive increase from 1990’s 12.4M CVD deaths, driven by the growing and aging population combined with mounting metabolic, behavioral, and environmental risks. The authors positioned this year’s Almanac as a call to action for implementing new CVD-fighting practices globally.

Patient-Centered Design for Diabetes Care

Glooko’s recently overhauled Mobile App makes it easier than ever for diabetes patients to organize, log, visualize, and share their data. Head over to this conversation with Glooko’s product and design team for a behind-the-scenes look at how patient-centered design is improving diabetes outcomes.

Creating an Exceptional Engagement Experience

With a surge in experience‑oriented disruptors entering the healthcare industry, patient engagement is becoming a crucial competitive differentiator. Get your copy of Nuance’s guide to  delivering intelligent interactions and a better experience at every touchpoint.

Successful RPM Through End-to-End Support

From needs assessments and program deployment to security enhancements and call center monitoring, Clear Arch Health offers fully customizable support services to help you get the most from your RPM solution.