I think we can safely add “travel agent” to the list of anachronisms that have gradually receded from our collective consciousness. Along with pay phones, and at some point in the future, brick-and-mortar retail stores. One needn’t look far to see the humble travel agent’s replacement: hundreds of websites and mobile applications from which one… Read More
As a perioperative business manager for over a decade, I’ve seen dozens of approaches and projects to improve operating room efficiency. No matter how you calculate your operating room utilization, if it’s less than 80% there’s room for improvement. Even if you’re happy with your utilization as a metric, you know you have several problems:… Read More
Among today’s biggest trends are EHRs and business intelligence. We’re investing millions of dollars creating “data engines” that track patients throughout the continuum of care. In many ways it’s similar to the internet in its infancy — we’re building a foundational layer that will transform how we deliver care and, over the next decade, care… Read More
It seems as if news about another hospital laying off workers–or worse, closing–hits the news everyday; at last count 21 hospitals stopped treating patients in 2016. Hospitals and healthcare systems across the country, including some of the largest, laid off thousands of employees. In November 2016 alone, 13 providers eliminated more than 1,000 jobs. In September,… Read More
Hat tip to Sharon O’Keefe, CEO of the University of Chicago Medical Center, for introducing the phrase “make your assets sweat” to our team, which inspired me to write this article. The Affordable Care Act, increased government regulations and rising healthcare costs are forcing hospitals to do more with less. Last year, several major healthcare networks… Read More
One minute of utilized operating room (OR) time can be worth more than $70 in revenue and one minute of staffed OR time can cost $50 or more, making underutilized OR time a huge problem. Each year, roughly 51 million surgeries are performed in the 5,000+ hospitals and 5,000+ surgery centers in the U.S. MGMA… Read More
A common challenge with healthcare in general, and cancer care in particular, is the peaks and valleys in patient appointment scheduling, which often results in inefficient use of scarce and expensive resources, unpredictable wait times for patients and overtime hours for staff. Sanjeev Argawal, president and CMO of LeanTaaS Healthcare explains how data-science can optimize… Read More
Interoperability continues to be one of healthcare IT’s biggest trends in 2016 as the industry sees momentous forward movement. In fact, interoperability is not a new trend. It has been an important mission (and a challenge) for healthcare administrators for decades, but the past couple of years have been game-changing. First, the U.S. Department of… Read More
Explosion of data volumes. Interoperability of systems. Large servers in the sky that can analyze enormous amounts of data, compute complex algorithms in real time, and communicate in microseconds. Mobile communication through devices that patients, providers and staff all carry all the time. What does this all mean for hospital operations? Based on working with… Read More
Dick Foster is a Partner at Lux Capital and a member of our Board. Becker’s interviewed him to get his thoughts on healthcare trends and the “hospital of the future”. NOTE: This is the second segment in Becker’s two-part interview with Dr. Dick Foster. In Part I of this interview, they covered the latest technology trends and challenges… Read More