Here are some new reports and studies that we thought interesting enough to share. Along with telemedicine and e-prescribing, remote patient monitoring has gotten its share of attention and growth this past year. Health information exchanges can help improve the accuracy of scoring clinical quality measures. Checking in on the millennials (remember them?) and how they survived the last year. And Medicare is as confusing as ever to those seniors who are trying to navigate their healthcare. These are a few of the topics covered, check out the entire list.
Rimidi Report: 70% of Patients Believe Remote Patient Monitoring Enables Better Care Management
Rimidi (@Jointherimidi), a cloud-based software platform that enables personalized management of health conditions across populations, released the results of its 2021 Guide to Remote Patient Monitoring Report, titled, “What Patients Want: The Beginning of a Revolution in Care Delivery.” The report unveils new patient data from leading health system and Rimidi client, Desert Oasis Healthcare, underscores the need for remote patient monitoring (RPM) to improve patient outcomes and cost of care, and details the current reimbursement landscape for providers.
Peer-Reviewed Research from Diameter Health and KONZA Demonstrates Value of Health Information Exchange (HIE) Data for Quality Reporting
Diameter Health (@DiameterHealth), the standard for health data optimization, and KONZA (@KonzaHealth), a nationwide health information network, announced the publishing of a ground-breaking research study that provides evidence that calculating clinical quality measures using enriched, health data within a health information exchange (HIE) improves the accuracy of the quality scores.
Survey: Democrats, Republicans Fracture on Financing Nation’s Healthcare Needs
With the Affordable Care Act (ACA) under threat in the Supreme Court and COVID-19 raging nationwide, a new survey from Healthcare Insider (@HealthCareInc) shows Americans starkly divided on how to pay for the nation’s healthcare needs. Asked if Americans should be required to have health insurance as they must with auto insurance, 43% of respondents nationwide answered yes, 37% no, and 20% said they don’t know. But Democrats and Republicans broke sharply on the question.
A Quarter of Medicare Enrollees Don’t Understand Plans Well: Survey
According to Medicare Guide (@HealthCareInc), a new survey of elderly Americans shows that many don’t fully understand their Medicare health plans. Asked how well, if at all, they understand Medicare Supplement and Medicare Advantage plans, 29% of respondents said they understand their Medicare Advantage plans not very well or not well at all. 23% said the same of their Medicare Supplement plans. That means about one-quarter of elderly Americans lack sufficient understanding of the health insurance they rely on for coverage. MedicareGuide.com surveyed 1,010 U.S. adults aged 65 and over with Medicare plans to better understand how they selected their plan.
Survey Reveals How COVID-19 Pandemic Has Impacted Millennial Health
Healthcare has been at the top of mind for Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, but how seriously have millennials been about their personal health throughout the last year? As a health data management firm interested in the health habits of millennials, Harmony Healthcare IT (@HarmonyHIT) recently surveyed millennials on the topic of healthcare, primary care physicians and annual physical examinations during the pandemic.
Is COVID-19 Fueling the Next Opioid Epidemic?
The Data Says Yes. As a behavioral health care provider, The Recovery Village (@recoveryvillage) have been studying drug and alcohol usage during the pandemic since it began. They have seen a clear and significant increase in substance use as well as reported mental health symptoms. Prior to the emergence of COVID-19, the opioid epidemic dominated both local and national public health headlines. Between 2006-2012, 76 billion opioid pills flooded the country. Florida in particular became a focal point as the crisis developed. In fact, just last month, the Florida governor announced a $5 million pilot program to help fight the crisis in the state.
Virtual Care Use Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Study
From Docwire News (@mydocwire), this report:
Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is thought to have increased use of virtual care, but population-based studies are lacking. We aimed to assess the uptake of virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic using comprehensive population-based data from Ontario.
Methods: This was a repeated cross-sectional study design. We used administrative data to evaluate changes in in-person and virtual visits among all residents of Ontario before (2012-2019) and during (January-August 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. We included all patients who had an ambulatory care visit in Ontario. We excluded claims for patients who were not Ontario residents or had an invalid or missing health card number. We compared monthly or quarterly virtual care use across age groups, neighbourhood income quintiles and chronic disease subgroups. We also examined physician characteristics that may have been associated with virtual care use.
Survey: Healthcare Industry Will Continue to Embrace Digital Healthcare Platforms in 2021
Noteworth (@noteworth_), a first-of-its-kind transformative virtual care delivery platform, released findings of their latest survey highlighting the ways in which digital medicine platforms helped organizations navigate the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the more than 250 medical professionals surveyed, two-thirds (68%) believe that healthcare organizations will continue engaging with patients via digital healthcare platforms post-pandemic.
Practice and Market Factors Associated With Provider Volume of Health Information Exchange
According to a recent JAMIA study (@AMIAinformatics), HIE use during referrals is low among office-based providers with the capability for exchange, especially PCPs. Practice-level factors were more commonly associated with greater levels of HIE use than market-level factors. Results included, providers used HIE in 49% of referrals; PCPs used HIE in fewer referrals (43%) than non-PCPs (57%). Provider use of products from EHR vendors was negatively related to HIE use, while use of Athenahealth and Greenway Health products were positively related to HIE use. Providers treating, on average, older patients and greater proportions of patients with diabetes used HIE for more referrals. Health system membership, market concentration, and state HIE consent policy were unrelated to provider HIE use.