Top Technologies Supporting Social Determinants of Health Work
PatientEngagementHIT While most health system social determinants of health initiatives are fundamentally about uncovering and fulfilling social needs, those efforts would not be complete without the health IT necessary to support them. Indeed, programs that address social determinants of health—the circumstances in which we live, work, and play which affect our health outcomes—almost entirely...
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Achieving Health Equity Hinges on Iteration, Continuous Learning
In what could feel like a culmination of decades of hard work, Hackensack Meridian University Medical Center’s recent Joint Commission certification for Health Care Equity is, in fact, another stop along its journey to health equity....
How Can Hospitals Measure Family Experience with Communication?
What would it take to improve the family experience and provider communication? While there’s still no magic elixir to create the perfect provider relationship, scientists at the Regenstrief Institute say family experience improvement...
How Pediatricians Can Prepare for the RSV Vaccine Rollout
Jonathan Miller, MD, the chief of primary care at Nemours Children’s Health in Delaware, doesn’t think the RSV vaccine rollout is going to go the same as the COVID vaccines for infants and young kids. It’s probably going...
Defining Patient Harm & Its Impact on the Patient Experience
Reducing adverse patient safety events is mission-critical for every healthcare organization. But if an effort to reduce patient harm is not a part of that mission, it could result in a serious lapse in patient experience. Patient safety...
What Is the Difference Between Organizational & Personal Health Literacy?
Healthcare providers looking into the concept of health literacy need to be aware of its two key caveats: organizational health literacy and personal health literacy. In its latest update, Healthy People, an initiative under the Department...
Top Patient Engagement Metrics to Improve Healthcare Quality
No patient-centered care mission is complete without patient engagement metrics. Patient engagement metrics help healthcare organizations assess the extent to which patients are involved in their own care. They can measure how the patient...
How to Use Teamwork to Create a Culture of Patient Safety
Mike Seim, MD, the senior vice president and chief quality officer at WellSpan Health, can hardly remember the last time some of the system’s hospitals had central line-associated bloodstream infections or catheter-associated UTIs....
Key Considerations for Patient Data Access, Patient Engagement
Most experts agree that patient data access is crucial for strong patient engagement. Although most patient engagement strategies also incorporate principles of patient-centered care, patient education, and social determinants of health,...
Behind the Scenes of U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Rankings
For more than 30 years, the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals rankings have sought to help patients make the best decisions about where they can access care. But for the 2023-2024 ratings year, the publication’s team of...
Making HIV Testing A Standard of Preventive Care to Boost Equity
Maranda Ward, EdD, MPH, wants every primary care provider asking all of their patients about HIV screening as a standard of preventive care. After all, that’s the best way to keep patients from slipping through the cracks and going...
Top Considerations for Care Coordination in Chronic Disease Management
Care coordination is something of a holy grail in chronic disease management. Without it, patients can’t connect the various—and often disparate—aspects of their care and achieve better outcomes. Care coordination brings...
Top Patient Engagement Technologies for Population Health Management
Any good population health strategy needs good patient engagement, and as a part of that, good patient engagement technologies. Defined by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, population health is an “interdisciplinary,...
How Mount Sinai Took a Data-Driven Approach to Health Equity
If you ask Lynne Richardson, MD, the road to health equity is paved with data. The emergency medicine doctor is also a founding co-director of the Institute for Health Equity Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, which...
How U-M Health Got 27K Staff Members in Implicit Bias Training
It’s not every day that a health system can boast of achieving 112 percent of its goal for anything, but that’s where Michigan Medicine finds itself with its implicit bias trainings. In just a year, the health system has gotten...
Leading Types of Food Is Medicine Programs, Interventions
Food is medicine is an emerging philosophy in healthcare that acknowledges the link between diet, food security, and disease. Defined by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation, food is medicine “is a reaffirmation that food...
Expanding Cancer Screening Access Beyond Charity Care
It’s not uncommon for healthcare organizations to set up free breast cancer screening events as part of their charity care efforts to serve low-income, uninsured people. But what happens when a screening turns into a breast cancer...
PROs & PROMs: Understanding Patient-Reported Outcomes Measures
Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and patient-reported outcomes measures (PROMs) are yet two others in a long list of quality reporting that happens in healthcare. Defined as reports coming straight from the patient without provider...
How AI in the Call Center Can Improve Staff, Patient Experience
For a certain patient population, the appointment scheduling process needs to look a bit like booking a flight. They know where they want to go, which service they need, and which clinician they want to see. And it makes no sense for those...
Strategically Implementing Technology for Follow-Up Care Engagement
Close to 45,000 emergency department visits means a lot of phone calls for follow-up care and engagement. But that’s been the reality at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, where just two nurses are in charge of calling...
