Cloud-based EHR provider Practice Fusion, recently launched a new program designed to help providers diagnose rare diseases. The program leverages predictive data models developed from retrospective studies conducted using over 38 million records from Practice Fusion’s de-identified clinical database.
In the U.S., a disease or condition is considered “rare” if it affects fewer than 200,000 persons. Although a particular rare disease may only afflict a few thousand Americans, there are over 30 million Americans suffering from rare diseases in general. With Practice Fusion’s new offering, if a patient is identified as having characteristic clinical markers of a rare disease included in its rare diseases program, the provider is notified during the patient visit through clinical decision support advisories in the EHR. The provider may then access information on the rare disease and learn about available testing to potentially confirm or rule out a diagnosis. These insights can help deliver better, safer and more efficient care for patients, further demonstrating Practice Fusion’s commitment to helping practitioners provide personalized medicine for their patients.
“Patients with a rare disease often present with nonspecific symptoms that can mimic a myriad of other more common disorders,” said Richard Loomis MD, vice president and chief medical officer of Practice Fusion. “The journey to diagnosis [Read more…]
A recent study by Decision Resources Group finds that U.S. physicians are struggling to keep up with a fast-changing healthcare system. New goals reflect the shift toward qualitative remuneration are a particular sore spot – 43% of physicians agree that “my organization is struggling to understand and meet goals of value and quality,” such as hospital readmissions, cost per patient and patient outcomes, according to DRG’s Taking the Pulse® U.S. 2016 study of 2,994 U.S. physicians.
CareCloud has announced the availability of CareCloud Patient Payments, its new integrated credit processing solution available to users of CareCloud Central, the company’s medical practice management system. The new solution enables medical groups to process patient payments more efficiently, offer greater payment flexibility to patients, and improve overall patient billing effectiveness.
While past reports have cited consumer adoption as a top barrier to telehealth usage, these new findings show the main obstacle for healthcare providers remains centered around cash flow–without enough to fund the technology, or enough potential revenue to justify an expense. The top two barriers, encountered by about half of organizations, are the necessary investments for telehealth technology and infrastructure (50 percent) and issues related to reimbursement (48 percent).
OneDX, a platform that enables medical images to be viewed, downloaded, and shared securely from remote points using iOS, Android, or Windows OS devices, attracted a good deal of attention from health care professionals at the 2016 HIMSS Annual Conference in Las Vegas. With its customizable features, this new technology is redefining coordinated health care delivery for imaging centers in New York and Connecticut. Physicians using the platform view medical images generated offsite and integrate them instantly into a patient’s electronic health record (EHR), avoiding bottlenecks that can delay when patients receive results.
The increased use of electronic health records, healthcare applications and other technologies by consumers has created a shift in the way healthcare providers engage with patients, expanding the role of health information management professionals in consumer engagement.
Aprima Medical Software has announced the availability of new Chronic Care Management (CCM) functionality for the Aprima EHR system, which can help physicians more easily document, bill, and be reimbursed for chronic care management services.