March 19, 2024

Top 3 Challenges in Healthcare in 2020

1. Cybersecurity

The medical and healthcare sector collects highly sensitive patient information, which puts the industry in the crosshairs of cybersecurity attacks. There were 2,546 healthcare data breaches involving more than 500 records in the United States between 2009 and 2018, resulting in the in the exposure and theft of 189,945,874 healthcare records – this equates to more than 59 percent of the nation’s population. In 2017 alone, the medical and healthcare sector experienced more than 350 data breaches that exposed 4.93 million patient records.

While experts are still finalizing the breach figures for 2019, it looks to be the worst year yet. Today, the healthcare industry accounts for four out of every five data breaches, according to HIPPA Journal. The cost of these breaches to the industry will likely reach $4 billion in 2020.

Black Book Market Research LLC recently surveyed 2,876 security professionals from 733 provider organizations to identify the reasons healthcare organizations continue to experience data breaches and cyber attacks. They found that budget constraints prevented the replacement of legacy software and devices, which left them more vulnerable to attack. “It is becoming increasingly difficult for hospitals to find the dollars to invest in an area that does not produce revenue,” said the founder of Black Book, Doug Brown, in a press release. Ninety percent of hospital representatives in the survey said that their IT security budgets have remained unchanged since 2016.

2. Transparency

Transparency has been a hot topic for several years, and will continue to be a burning issue into 2020 and beyond. A 2016 survey by Accenture found that 91 percent of consumers wanted to know their out-of-pocket costs before they received care.

Triggered by the Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First issued in June of 2019, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued new rules to increase price transparency.

The first rule, Calendar Year (CY) 2020 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) & Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Price Transparency Requirements for Hospitals to Make Standard Charges Public Final Rule, requires that hospitals provide patients with easily accessible information about standard charges for services and items offered. Standard charges must be available in a single data file that other computer systems can read. Hospital websites must display “shoppable services” information in a consumer-friendly format. This rule takes effect on January 1, 2021.

CMS’s second proposed rule, the Transparency in Coverage rule, would impose price transparency requirements on insurers.

3. Patient-friendly Payment Models

Patient financial responsibility for outpatient, and emergency department care is on the rise, with out-of-pocket costs increasing by 12 percent in 2018, according to TransUnion.

This shift towards patient financial responsibility could bog down invoice and payment processing, particularly for practices that do not have an in-house invoicing and payment processing system geared towards accepting payments from patients. These practices will need to build patient portals, secure payment processing, and other infrastructure to handle such payments and fund administrative costs of maintaining these technologies. Furthermore, they will need to ensure their payment portals and processing systems are compliant with guidelines that protect patient information.

Unfortunately, 90 percent of healthcare providers still use paper and manual payment processes, according to a 2018 InstaMed survey. To make matters worse, 70 percent of consumers said they were confused by medical bills. Not surprisingly, 77 percent of providers said it takes more than a month to collect a payment. To be paid on time, providers must overcome the obstacles of upgrading their payment processing systems and clarify billing.

With a little planning – and a bit of luck – those in the healthcare industry can overcome these challenges and put themselves in a great position for the rest of the decade.

To View Frank Magliochetti Press Releases Please CLICK HERE

Frank Magliochetti owes his professional success to his expertise in two areas: medicine and finance. After obtaining a BS in pharmacy from Northeastern University, he stayed on to enroll in the Masters of Toxicology program. He later specialized in corporate finance, receiving an MBA from The Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University. His educational background includes completion of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and the General Management Program at Stanford Business School. Frank Magliochetti has held senior positions at Baxter International, Kontron Instruments, Haemonetics Corporation, and Sandoz. Since 2000, he has been a managing partner at Parcae Capital, where he focuses on financial restructuring and interim management services for companies in the healthcare, media, and alternative energy industries. Earlier this year, he was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Mr. Frank Magliochetti MBA
Managing Partner
Parcae Capital

www.parcaecapitalcorp.com
www.frankmagliochetti.com

SOURCES:

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/cybersecurity/11-of-the-biggest-healthcare-cyberattacks-of-2017.html

https://blackbookmarketresearch.com/health-data-security-and-privacy

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/healthcare-data-breaches-costs-industry-4-billion-by-years-end-2020-will-be-worse-reports-new-black-book-survey-300950388.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-improving-price-quality-transparency-american-healthcare-put-patients-first/

https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/cy-2020-hospital-outpatient-prospective-payment-system-opps-policy-changes-hospital-price

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cms-9915-p.pdf

https://newsroom.transunion.com/out-of-pocket-costs-rising-even-as-patients-transition-to-lower-cost-settings-of-care/

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190415005538/en/

Healthcare or IT Business?

Healthcare is Becoming an Information Technology Business

Frank Magliochetti declares that; Health information technology now plays an important role in patient care, payment and research, but it wasn’t always this way. Today’s health information technology represents an evolution in record keeping within the healthcare industry. In 1924, the American College of Surgeons adopted the Minimum Standard Document to ensure the recording of a complete case record that included identifying data, chief complaint, personal and family history, physical examinations, laboratory results and x-rays.

In the 20th Century, those records were written by hand and paper copies were generally stored on or offsite, unless required for a hospitalization, doctor visit or research. Sharing patient information with even one consultant or payer typically meant long hours at the copying machine to create thick envelopes filled with data that could take a substantial amount of time to sort; sharing only pertinent information with multiple parties was next to impossible.

Computers and the internet heralded the information age and electronic health records (EHR), which allowed the mass sharing and analysis of data in an instant and without cumbersome and costly paper. In 2004, President George W. Bush created the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), which now synchronizes HIT in the U.S. healthcare sector. Passed as part of the larger American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act created incentives to use health care information technology.

Each of these events paved the way to today’s already robust and rapidly growing information technology business. HITECH seems to have worked – as of 2017, 86 percent of office-based physicians had adopted an EHR and 96 percent of all non-federal, acute care hospitals had a certified health IT department or person, according to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Today’s HIT Business

To meet the growing demand on the clinical side, hundreds of healthcare IT software and service companies have sprung up across the country. Healthcare IT Skills lists more than 350 such companies, including EHRs, consulting firms, medical device providers, population health, revenue cycle management, analytics, and more.

Healthcare information technology (HIT) merges electronic systems with healthcare to store, share and analyze patient information. The advanced technology also integrates with practice management software to improve office functions that lead to better patient care. HIT now features patient portals that provides patients with access to their medical history, allows them to make appointments, message their practitioner, view bills and even pay bills online. HIT also includes features to make practitioners’ lives easier, such as ePrescribing, remote patient monitoring, and master patient indexes (MPIs) that connects patient databases with more than one database, which allows different departments within a facility to share all of the data simultaneously. MPIs reduce the need for manual duplication of patient records for filling out claims and decrease errors involving patient information, which can result in fewer patient claim denials.

As with any disruptive technology, healthcare information technology has its drawbacks and its critics. Some complain that EHRs have led to practitioners spending more time sitting in front of a computer than talk with patients. Others bemoan the cumbersome federal regulations involved. The benefits of HIT, however far outweigh its downsides.

Advantages of today’s health information technology include the ability to use big data and data analytics to manage population health manage programs effectively, for example, which is impossible with old-fashioned paper records. HIT can use data and analytics to reduce the incidence of expensive and debilitating chronic health conditions, use cognitive computing and analytics to perform precision medicine (PM) tailored to each patient’s needs, and create a means by which academic researchers to share data in hopes of developing new medical therapies and drugs. Lastly, health information technology allows patients to obtain and use their own health data, and to collaborate more fully in their own care with doctors.

Tomorrow’s HIT companies will use artificial intelligence (AI), virtual simulations, and other emerging technologies to further enhance and improve healthcare. Technologies will include digital insurance markets, price transparency tools, cloud storage that will render costly and insecure data centers obsolete, self-serve mobile applications that will eliminate forms and faxes, and centralized clearinghouses that share information across organizations and state lines. Many of these HIT applications will improve labor productivity and, given the fact that wages account for 56 percent of all healthcare spending, improvements in this area could generate significant economic gains.

Information technology will undoubtedly continue in its growth as an important and increasingly essential part of healthcare. The benefits of HIT will also continue to expand, as researchers, doctors, patients and healthcare companies integrate healthcare information technology into their everyday lives and standard business practices

To View Frank Magliochetti Press Releases Please CLICK HERE

Frank Magliochetti owes his professional success to his expertise in two areas: medicine and finance. After obtaining a BS in pharmacy from Northeastern University, he stayed on to enroll in the Masters of Toxicology program. He later specialized in corporate finance, receiving an MBA from The Sawyer School of Business at Suffolk University. His educational background includes completion of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School and the General Management Program at Stanford Business School. Frank Magliochetti has held senior positions at Baxter International, Kontron Instruments, Haemonetics Corporation, and Sandoz. Since 2000, he has been a managing partner at Parcae Capital, where he focuses on financial restructuring and interim management services for companies in the healthcare, media, and alternative energy industries. Earlier this year, he was appointed chairman of the board at Grace Health Technology, a company providing an enterprise solution for the laboratory environment.

Mr. Frank Magliochetti MBA
Managing Partner
Parcae Capital

www.parcaecapitalcorp.com
www.frankmagliochetti.com