Staffing Shortages Aren’t Just a Business Problem, They’re a Patient Safety Threat
Since 2020, the healthcare industry has lost nearly half a million workers, exacerbating staffing shortages that existed prior to the start of the pandemic. One of the hardest-hit areas is the pharmacy. As of September 2021, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected there would be 43,000 pharmacist and pharmacy technician job openings each year throughout the next decade.
ABQAURP News: February 2022
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services defines a transition of care as the movement of a patient from one setting of care to another. Settings of care may include hospitals, ambulatory primary care practices, ambulatory specialty care practices, long-term care facilities, home health, and rehabilitation facilities. To improve these transitions, our health care system needs strong interdisciplinary care teams to collaborate and establish processes that improve transitions at each level of care within the health care continuum.
Delivery of Care: Creating Communication Inroads
The healthcare industry continues to look for ways to improve care delivery, quality of care, and outreach. However, these discussions often fail to consider the challenge of real-world logistics. Without reliable access to care—including vital elements like food, transportation, and pharmacies—vulnerable patients will remain hard pressed to improve their overall quality of health.
Addressing the MRI and CT Adoption Gap in Cardiovascular Imaging Certification
While nuclear cardiac imaging and echocardiography have been the mainstays of cardiovascular imaging modalities, MRI and CT offer cardiologists additional diagnostic tools that could improve outcomes in patients with heart disease. For example, advances in coronary CT technology allow for novel analyses such as removal of artifacts related to coronary calcification, detailed coronary plaque characterization, and even dynamic myocardial perfusion analysis.
How Direct Contracting Initiatives Can Help Bring CBOs Into VBC Networks
Providers, payers, community advocates, and the public health sector increasingly recognize that implementing value-based care (VBC) will be difficult without also addressing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the healthcare ecosystem. Unlike traditional fee-for-service healthcare, VBC is about proactively keeping people healthy rather than engaging in reactive and more costly “sick care.”
‘But Will It Hurt?’ Empowering Patients With Empathetic, Intelligent Virtual Assistants
Automated phone menus and rudimentary chatbots (only capable of providing maddening yes-or-no answers) are being replaced by next-generation intelligent virtual assistants (IVA) that leverage natural language. These bots provide a more human-like experience that is personalized, immediately accessible, and empathetic—while also being secure and HIPAA compliant.
Decentralizing Clinical Trials Through Disruption
Clinical trials are expensive, take significant time, and can run into any number of challenges and delays. The average drug study will see a 30% patient dropout rate. What is needed, according to Virginia-based Jeeva Informatics, is more diverse patient enrollment, better engagement, and increased evidence generation.
Quality’s Impact on Sustainability and the Future
Chartered Quality Institute recently celebrated World Quality Week, which focuses on the quality management profession, concentrating on quality’s role in better sustainability as well as its environmental, social, and governance impact. In a healthcare landscape that is growing ever more complex, quality’s impact on sustainability and how the industry reacts and responds to changing regulations is more important than ever.
A Collaborative Effort to Improve Antimicrobial Stewardship and Beyond
Pharmacies need a streamlined clinical and operational option to integrate data and deliver actionable analytics in one place rather than across disparate sources. This is particularly important in infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship programs, where providers need to identify indications, treatment options, resistance considerations, potential drug interactions, and pharmacology.
The Top Three Things Healthcare Executives Should Prioritize in 2022
Finding the right business model to support the clinical mission among these challenges is critical but highly challenging. Enhanced use of data and data analytics, however, can help address these challenges both short and long term. Here are the three things healthcare executives should prioritize in 2022.