Paul Barr

Get Involved, Health Information Technology (HIT), Leadership, Care Delivery, Strategic Planning, Leveraging Technology

Prevention, Communication, Prediction: Major Tasks of Health Care IT

If they didn’t know it already, members of the hospital field’s C-suites do now: Keeping health care data out of the hands of cybercriminals is harder than ever.

Thanks to stories in recent months about the escalation in the types of acts criminals will take to profit from stealing hospital data or holding it for ransom, an awareness of the depth of the problem has reached the general public.

Care Delivery, Leveraging Technology

IBM Watson Health Growing Fast

IBM Watson Health last year formally jumped into predictive analytics and has been on a tear ever since, doing deals and partnering with health care providers and commercial enterprises. For years, IBM had a traditional computer infrastructure business in health care.

Delivery System Transformation, Governance Effectiveness, Strategic Planning

Three Practical Approaches to Population Health

Governance Effectiveness, Operational Excellence, Care Delivery, Patient and Family Education/Engagement, Strategic Planning, Issues & Trends, Workforce

Hospitals Tap Into News Reporting to Connect With Community

Hospitals can build stronger connections to the community through popular social media sites and apps. Some hospitals are hiring full-time and freelance journalists to write stories and produce videos on health trends, news of the day and the hospital itself.

“We’re updating the site with two to three stories a day,” says Cheryl Welch, managing editor for one of the more ambitious efforts, Spectrum Health Beat, which is backed by Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Delivery System Transformation, Legislation and Legislative Advocacy, Strategic Planning, Issues & Trends

Medicaid Reform Takes Hold

Snapshot

State Medicaid programs are saving money and improving quality by adding risk-based reimbursement and care models that wrap around patients. The states to watch are Oregon, Arkansas, Vermont and New York.

With many in the hospital field looking to Washington, D.C., for guidance on how health care reform will unfold, they might want to start paying more attention to what’s happening in their own backyards.

Artificial Intelligence Gaining Ground in Health Care

Health care may still be at the very early stages of using computers that can learn and adapt over time, but the industry is advancing in that regard.

We recently heard about how Mayo Clinic and IBM are partnering to use the artificially intelligent computer known as Watson to link patients better to clinical trials.