Weekly News Roundup: December 21, 2018

With the holiday season suddenly upon us, we wanted to share some of the biggest news stories from 2018. Amazon made headlines as it leapt further into the world of healthcare, healthcare became more precise, and payers made the news with mergers, acquisitions, and other shenanigans.

We also share the six biggest problems with homegrown healthcare analytics platforms and a recent ONC report that examines the many different forms of exchanging healthcare data that hospitals are wrestling with.

Five Ways Healthcare Became More Precise in 2018

From immunotherapy to NASA-like hospital Command Centers, advances over the past 12 months set the stage for more breakthroughs in health care With global healthcare expenditure now exceeding $7 trillion per year, governments and hospitals are looking to eliminate unnecessary spend and deliver … Read More

Healthcare Analytics Platforms: The Six Biggest Problems With Homegrown Solutions

As the need for data-driven improvement becomes more urgent, many health systems are finding their data management and analytics solutions are falling behind. Most traditional data warehouses are overwhelmed by analytic requests and lack the ability to support today’s increased and rapidly changing demands. Read More

Amazon Moves into Healthcare: A 2018 Timeline

Amazon made headlines this year especially as it leaped further into the healthcare arena. While there has been speculation about Amazon’s entry into the industry for years, announcements by the e-commerce giant in 2018 make it clear that it’s planning to make a big splash in healthcare. Here’s a breakdown of Amazon’s healthcare ventures, acquisitions, hiring trends and product developments reported by Becker’s Hospital Review. Read More

ONC Report: Hospitals are Wrangling with Multiple Means of Exchanging Health Data

Despite all the progress with EHR adoption, a new report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) shows hospitals are still using faxes to share information and most of them are still wrangling multiple electronic health record systems. Hospital health information exchange is complex, involving a variety of methods, according to ONC, which used data gathered from hospital CIOs in partnership with the American Hospital Association between January and mid-May of this year. Read More

Payer Year in Review: Five Top Stories of 2018

Here are the five most-read stories involving health insurers published by Becker’s Hospital Review in 2018: 1. With 8k more physicians than Kaiser, Optum is ‘scaring the crap out of hospitals’ Since its acquisition of 250 Las Vegas-area physicians in 2008, UnitedHealth Group has steadily expanded its physician workforce to shield itself from competitors and hospitals. Read More