The Pulse:
Healthcare Technology Blog
Regulatory reform, market trends, supplier news. Recalls and new product introductions. Notable quotables and high-profile executive moves. Read up on developments from the supply chain to the legal department.
The Invisible Impact of Credentialing – Part Two
More than two decades ago, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was signed into law. One of its most significant provisions was to create a standard method of protecting patient data, regardless of where it resides. In 2000 additional...
New Hospital Price Transparency Rule: Will It Really Help Healthcare Consumers?
In an effort to lower the costs of one of the major components of healthcare, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has instituted a new hospital price transparency rule. Expected to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, the rule will require all non-federal...
The Invisible Impact of Credentialing – Part One
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka ARRA, aka Stimulus Program) brought with it unprecedented incentives for healthcare providers to widely adopt electronic health records, and they did. One year later, the passage of the Affordable Care Act resulted...
Usher in the Era of Collaboration
Collaboration with others leads to all success, whether producing innovation, growing a business, or reducing costs. While people talk about how collaboration is the key to success, one question comes to mind: How do you make cross-departmental collaboration occur...
Maintenance Agreements 101: Key Points for Initial Navigation
Service contracts may be the responsibility of the purchased services team or of the capital procurement team, or have their own division within the Supply Chain. The most mature Supply Chain departments have their own maintenance agreement division responsible for...
Healthcare M&A: Focus on Synergies, Not the Pain Points
Mergers & Acquisitions have altered the healthcare landscape dramatically over the past decade, and the activity continues to accelerate and evolve. M&A in healthcare has become an essential reality with the transition to value-based care, and Supply Chain...
Advancements and Concerns in Healthcare Voice Recognition Technology
A major concern of the medical industry throughout its history has been the documentation of patient encounters in a timely fashion while maintaining patient privacy and confidentiality. Medical dictation and transcription technologies have traditionally been integral...
Billing Begins with Insurance and Provider Enrollment Verification
Insurance verification plays an important role in a practice’s revenue cycle management efforts. When verifications are not managed properly, lost revenue can be significant. In addition to the provider’s time, other investments are at risk of being written off when a...
Re-Defining Physician Credentialing Management Strategies
Increased M&A activity and physician alignment strategies has caused an unprecedented increase in physician on-boarding. Current physician credentialing management strategies are not equipped to handle this volume and require a shift from a “one to many”...
Credentialing Challenges and Opportunities for Physician Practices
Patrick Doyle, Newport VP of Business Development shares the credentialing challenges and opportunities of Physician Practices and the newly formed state and federal exchange plans. Q. How does the addition of new state and federal exchange plans challenge your...
Establishing a Governance Committee is Like Building a Winning Football Team.
Healthcare contracting isn’t a game, and the stakes are a whole lot higher, but creating a successful contract management program is a bit like building a winning football program. Strategy is essential, and you have to follow the rules to avoid penalties. To build an...
Hidden Ways Hospitals Can Save Money
2017 is predicted to be a challenging year for health systems and hospitals around the country, according to a recent blog post by Deloitte. Increased financial pressures are expected due to changes to the payer mix, the move towards value-based care and uncertainty...
How Does Credentialing Impact RCM? Three Questions with Newport’s CEO Scott Friesen
Scott Friesen, CEO of Lynbrook, N.Y.- based Newport Credentialing Solutions, founded the company in 2009, after spending years in revenue cycle management and finding that provider enrollment with managed care and government insurance plans is becoming increasingly...
Q&A: The Importance of Utilizing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Provider Enrollment
Allyson Schiff, Newport VP of Operations, discusses the importance of utilizing robust Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to improve your provider enrollment department’s performance. Q. How do you identify which KPIs you should be using? A. The first...
Choose an Organization with NCQA Credentialing Accreditation – Not Just CVO Certification
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of healthcare organizations, including those that handle provider credentialing. Provider...
Physician Employment by Systems Hits an All-time High. Here Are Some Laws to Consider
The number of physicians working for hospitals in the U.S. continues to grow. A study released this year by Avalere and the Physicians Advocacy Institute says that the percentage of hospital-employed physicians has increased by more than 70% over the last six...
How Artificial Intelligence Can Aid Post-Merger Integration
More than just a buzzword, artificial intelligence is already proving to be a game changer for organizations across a variety of industries—despite being in its infancy stage. Building off digital transformation, AI empowers organizations to leverage vast of amounts...
Five Contract Negotiation Strategies Healthcare Professionals Should Know
Skilled negotiators are like musical virtuosos. They have an extensive repertoire of instruments from which to draw upon, and they know when and how to make them a part of their performance. But negotiating healthcare contracts for capital, purchased services and IT...
Industry Voices—Emerging tech creates a make-or-break opportunity for payers
The cost of healthcare is rising and is expected to reach $2.6 billion by 2026, according to the National Institutes of Health. While this is an alarming projection, of equal concern is that approximately one-third of all healthcare spending in the United States is...
It All Starts with a Contract
At MediTract, while working with thousands of hospital clients for more than 20 years, we’ve heard a common theme: “We don’t know what we don’t know about our contracts.” One of our clients remarked recently that “contracts are the crypto-currency within the...
Cybersecurity Strategies and Best Practices
Cybersecurity continues to be a major concern for healthcare organizations. Because of the sensitivity of the information they keep, hospitals are becoming a chosen target of cybercriminals. Cyberattacks are no longer a matter of “if” but “when.” The threat was top of...
When It Comes to Hospital Contracting Compliance, Hope is Not a Strategy
In a study published by Crowe, a public accounting, consulting, and technology firm, the top compliance challenges facing hospitals in 2019 are physician contracting, non-physician contracting/supply chain agreements, and compliance with the Health Insurance...
How Credentialing Systems Can Create a Competitive Edge for Payers
In the highly-competitive insurance industry, payers are constantly tasked with finding new ways to differentiate themselves from their competition. An often-overlooked opportunity to stand out among the crowd is the provider data management and the credentialing...
Improving Cancer Detection in Women with Dense Breasts
Detecting breast cancer in its early stages in women with dense breasts has become increasingly important to women’s health clinicians. However, identifying lesions in dense breasts is challenging. The breast is made of fibroglandular and fatty tissues. The more...
The Incredibly Talented i-STAT
Exact numbers are not available, but I would venture to say that more than half the hospitals in the U.S. have i-STATs, and almost every ambulatory surgery center, surgical hospital, and stand-alone emergency room in the U.S. has one or more. Many healthcare entities...
The New Math of Value-Based Capital Budgeting: Determining the Right Technology
“Value” is the new common denominator in healthcare. Its emergence has been driven by the need to reduce costs and improve quality of care—two major forces shaping the ever-changing healthcare market. When it comes to capital planning, many health systems are learning...
Baby Boomer Joint Replacements on the Rise
As the Baby Boomer generation ages, joint replacements are on the rise. The Boomer generation strives to maintain an active lifestyle, which is taking a toll on their joints. Doctors recommend low-impact exercise such as cycling, using an elliptical, or doing aerobic...
AI Meets M&A: The Case for AI Support in Diligence Efforts for Healthcare Mergers and Acquisitions
According to statnews.com, there have been at least 100 hospital mergers and acquisitions annually since 2014. It’s a trend that’s sure to continue as hospitals look to gain efficiencies of scale and gain control over the entire continuum of care through acquisition...
Concerns Arise Over Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing
"Genutainment” – The Wedding of Genetic Science and Social Entertainment Unless you have been living off the grid, you have probably run into an advertisement online or on television like this: Simply submit your saliva and we’ll test your DNA and discover your family...
Better Together: Integrating Credentialing and Contract Lifecycle Management
In an industry as heavily regulated as healthcare, contracting takes on new importance. Here, compliance concerns mean that definitions of value must also encompass the potential regulatory penalties a health system must avoid. And within the context of compliance,...
The Hidden Costs of Noncompliance in Healthcare Contracting
Traditional contract lifecycle management tools have been designed to support the demands of high-volume purchasing departments, where the primary output is a purchase order. As a result, these tools have focused on serving the needs of the department’s enterprise...
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