In this installment of our thought leader podcast series, I chat with Kevin Adams, Director of Revenue Cycle, Anderson Regional Medical Center (Meridian, MS) about the challenges and successes of revenue cycle management in healthcare today. During our discussion, Kevin shares insights on different payment and reimbursement models, and how government policies and insurance plans are constantly affecting the financial side of healthcare organizations every day. Kevin also covers how using lean process improvement, technology, and teamwork, resulted in lowering Anderson’s A/R days by 50% and reducing lost revenue by 90%. Listen in as revenue cycle industry expert, Kevin Adams, sheds some light on the past, present, and future of health systems’ financial status.

In early May, the Advisory Board released its Annual CEO Survey of 183 CEO’s about their top concerns for 2017. Interestingly, many of the concerns were related to the subject of Population Health and the healthcare industry’s movement from volume to value. Do any of these results or  concerns sound familiar to you or your organization?

In this installment of our thought leader podcast series, I chat with Cheryl Adams, RN, BSN, MBA, Home Health Administrator of Sparta Community Hospital (Sparta, IL) about home care and the significant role it plays in population health. During the podcast, Cheryl discusses Sparta’s successful deployment of a telehealth program along with some creative patient engagement approaches they’ve implemented to help patients follow their care plans and prevent inpatient readmissions. You’ll also hear about how Cheryl has seen healthcare evolve in her 30+ years in the industry, including a discussion on the changing expectations of patients as we shift to consumer-driven healthcare.

A few months back, I attended a panel on big data at an industry conference, and the moderator asked, “What are some of the benefits of using big data and analytics?”

A panelist replied, “There is enormous value in knowing how many appointments and visits my providers have — we couldn’t answer that question a year ago.” And the whole time I’m thinking, haven’t we moved beyond something so basic? Most analytics articles I read cite the importance of big data along with its difficulties and challenges, but they don’t give concrete, practical examples of how it can be leveraged on a daily basis.

In the debut of MEDITECH’s thought leader podcast series, I chat with Raphael Jaffrezic, CIO of Galway Clinic (Galway, Ireland) about the importance of big data in healthcare today. During our discussion, Raphael shares some examples of how Galway Clinic has leveraged analytics from their MEDITECH system to streamline processes and improve patient care. Raphael also shares his thoughts on the future of big data in healthcare and discusses how Galway Clinic’s upcoming migration to the MEDITECH Web EHR platform will further improve the data they capture.