Reflections on 2019

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Posted By: Industry Expert January 15, 2020

New Year’s Resolutions: Things from 2019 worth remembering
By Katherine H. Capps, Co-Founder and Executive Director, GTMRx Institute
Twitter: @GTMRxInstitute

Did you ever have one of those moments when your life’s work unexpectedly and suddenly takes on a whole new, deeper meaning and urgency? I recently experienced such an extraordinary moment doing something rather ordinary.

About every three months, a close friend and I retreat to our favorite wine bar for a few hours to catch up and talk about everything—family, work, life and what we’re doing to keep it all together as professional women trying to make our mark and leave the world (or at least health care) better than we found it.

A Look Back at 2019
By John Halamka MD
Twitter: @jhalamka

I’ve always been an optimist. I believe humans are basically good and that the nice guy will win eventually.

After traveling 400,000 miles to 40 countries in 2019, helping government, academia, and industry, my view of the world has not changed.

Despite our focus on the negative 24×7 news cycle, 2019 has been the best year for humanity in history.

My best memories, looking back at 2019:

Annual Reflections at the End of 2019
By William Hersh, MD, Professor and Chair, OHSU
Twitter: @williamhersh

It has been customary for me to post an annual reflection at the of end of the year for this blog. The world of blogging, and my own blogging, have certainly changed over the years. This is probably due in part to social media reaching a level of maturity or, in the parlance of the Gartner Hype Cycle, the plateau of productivity. When I started this blog, blogging was relatively new. In parallel was the excitement of the HITECH Act, which certainly transformed the world of biomedical and health informatics.

US Healthcare in 2019: Top Stories That Changed the World of Care Delivery
By Abhinav Shashank, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Innovaccer
Twitter: @abhinavshashank
Twitter: @innovaccer

Amazing, breathtaking, reformative, groundbreaking. No single adjective suffices to describe how 2019 changed US healthcare. With the end of the decade, we saw innumerable events happening — from massive health information technology mergers to new major government regulations.

While the year was full of exciting events happening all around, 365 days of the year, some incidents took us by surprise, and they pose great uncertainty for the year to come.

Let’s take a moment here to look at some of the biggest stories that were under the spotlight in the year 2019:

Reflections On 2019 And A Look Ahead For 2020
By Judy Monroe, MD, President and CEO, CDC Foundation
Twitter: @CDCFound

It’s 2020—a new year and a new decade, with many new beginnings. With each new year, I take time to review the previous one and see what made news. In a similar fashion, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released nine health threats that made headlines last year, ranging from the outbreak of mysterious lung-injury deaths to America’s near loss of its measles elimination status.

According to CDC, some of the biggest health issues of 2019 include:

Reflecting on 2019: The Year of Price Transparency in Healthcare
By Julie Gerdeman, CEO Health Pay 24
Twitter: @HealthPay24

There is little doubt that 2019 marks the official beginning of the price transparency movement in healthcare. The year kicked off as the CMS hospital price transparency rule went into effect, requiring U.S. hospitals to publicize their list of standard charges online. Later in November, CMS released a proposed “Transparency in Coverage” rule, which would require health plans to disclose their negotiated rates for both in- and out-of-network providers, and to provide consumers with specific details about their cost-sharing obligations for covered healthcare services.

As with any disruption in “business as usual”, there has been pushback. The year culminated with several hospital groups and individual facilities suing CMS over the legality of these regulations. The road to price transparency may be a rocky one, but it is a critical step in creating a consumer-centric healthcare ecosystem.

As I look back over the past year, I’d like to share some reflections and thoughts on how we can all embrace transparency to create a community of care that works for all stakeholders.

From Conversations on Health Care: Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter take a look at some of the highlights from the shows of 2019, the year they celebrated ten years on the air. They revisit their conversations with Flint Michigan pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha on the water crisis, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids CEO Matthew Myers on the vaping crisis, and health care innovators like Dr.Tom Delbanco of Open Notes and primary care transformer Dr. Bodenheimer, and the show’s 500th guest, House Majority Whip James Clyburn.

From PopHealth Week: Hosts Fred Goldstein and Gregg Masters are joined by seasoned healthcare analyst and Executive Vice President of Validation Institute, and host of ValidPoints podcast series Brian Klepper PhD on PopHealth Week’s last show of 2019, for an update on progress towards fulfillment of the triple aim.

From Healthcare IT Today: Hosts Colin Hung and John Lynn discuss what’s going to happen in health IT in 2020 on the 27th episode of the Healthcare IT Today podcast. They pull out their proverbial crystal ball and make some predictions on the following: What Will Be the Biggest Success in 2020? What Will Be the Biggest Disaster in 2020? Ones to Watch in 2020. What We’re Looking Forward to Most in 2020.

Health Forward Foundation