Even before the pandemic, the nation’s hospitals, urgent care facilities, medical groups and physician practices were suffering from widespread shortages of healthcare professionals. The problem still exists particularly with nurses. Now industry innovators are offering a solution to this pervasive problem – remote clinicians performing a wide range of routine tasks. One such innovator is…

Today’s physicians continue to face many challenges including having less time to spend with patients. They report spending just 27% of their time with patients and 50% of their time entering data into electronic health records (Source: Annals of Internal Medicine). Also hindering their practices is the myriad of administrative burdens resulting from having to…

Historically, hospital case management has relied on two traditional models, the dyad (integrated) model and the triad (collaborative) model. In the dyad model, one case manager performs utilization management (UM) and discharge planning (DP). The triad model involves two case managers, one performing UM and another performing DP, as well as a social worker managing…

Specialty drugs and their high costs have been in the spotlights for the last several years.  And, while measures to address their escalating costs have been introduced, there still is much more that needs to be done. The Inflation Reduction Act is expected to change the healthcare landscape in the upcoming years; including changes relating…

The use of medical case management continues to grow in all settings. Offsite medical case management, in particular, is experiencing significant growth. According to data released by ReportLinker and reported by Yahoo Finance on August 1, 2023, the offsite medical case management market size is projected to grow from $4.97 billion in 2023 to $5.94…

Healthcare in America is in a very dynamic period.  We have already witnessed the introduction of value-based healthcare, population health management and telehealth. New specialty drugs are being developed and approved at a rapid pace. The industry has continued to evolve to embrace new technologies, new models of care and advanced technologies, all of which…

The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) is the principal advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on policy development, which is primarily responsible for major activities in policy coordination, legislation development, strategic planning, policy research, evaluation, and economic analysis. The organization recently released an Issue Brief titled…

McKinsey & Company recently published its “What to expect in US healthcare in 2023 and beyond,” and it is a good news, bad news forecast. Cited are the challenges the healthcare industry is facing, notably continuing inflation and persistent labor shortages. McKinsey, however, is projecting that healthcare profit pools will grow at a 4 percent…

If you’ve been to a hospital recently, you or a loved one has experienced firsthand the nation’s nursing shortage. The situation has become so dire that nurses have taken to the picket lines to protest what they consider to be unsafe nurse-to-patient ratios. A study by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing reported…

For health plan sponsors, care management programs can benefit both employees and their employers. Not only can they help employees gain better control over their health and well-being, but they also enable plan sponsors to contain healthcare costs. For these reasons, it is important to understand care management’s value proposition. Care Management’s Value to Plan…