Welcome to our Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundup. Each week, we’ll be providing a look back at the articles we posted and why they’re important to the healthcare IT community. We hope this gives you a chance to catch up on anything you may have missed during the week.

Leveraging an Outside Provider for the EHR Service Desk. UI Health CIO Audrius Polikaitis talked to John about how the Illinois health system consolidated its help desk onto a “single front door” powered by HCTec. The move proved helpful following a transition to Epic and powered virtual onboarding during the pandemic. Read more…

It’s Time to Get Patient Addresses Straight. There’s no reason that clinical applications can’t get patient addresses right, especially now that ONC has adopted a standard (albeit voluntary) called Project USA. Andy Oram talked to Brent Francom at Smarty about working with vendors to integrate its API for address standardization and tackle the problem once and for all. Read more…

The Advantages, Challenges, and Costs of Healthcare at Home. This was our latest question for the Healthcare IT Today community. Insights included a need for greater staffing and reimbursement, the potential for care plan personalization, and the array of services that address clinical and non-clinical needs. Read more…

Improving Healthcare Interpretation Efficiency in Virtual Care. John Lynn touched on Boostlingo’s ability to integrate interpreter services into virtual appointments, either pre-scheduled or on demand. The program is available for Microsoft Teams, Webex, and Zoom. Read more… 

Reducing Errors, Turnaround Time, and Staff Burdens for RCM. John connected with Aakarsh Sethi and Stuart Newsome at Infinx, who explained how automating processes such as establishing eligibility, getting prior authorization, and billing can reduce denials. Read more…

When Insurance and Patients Start Demanding 24/7 Availability. How does a practice with two dentists and 12 employees offer 24/7 availability? John summarized a case study from a practice using the WellReceived mobile app to manage patient notifications when they’re out of the office. Read more…

How Generative AI Tools Can Help Payers, TPAs, and Patients. John recently sat down with Mike Clayton at VBA to learn how automation improves the user experience in areas ranging from claims processing to medication reminders. Read more…

Featured Collaboration at HIMSS24: MEDITECH, Google, and Mile Bluff Medical Center. In Orlando, John reported from a session where the Wisconsin-based health center described how it reduced staff burden after adopting generative AI technology that MEDITECH and Google Cloud built together. Read more…

Why Managing Mobile Devices at Scale Matters in Healthcare. Colin Hung caught up with Dr. Daniel Siegal at Navv Systems to discuss why it’s helpful to empower individual departments to manage their mobile devices, as they’re often closer than IT departments to where devices are actually being used. Read more…

CIO Podcast: The Impact of Data, Analytics, and AI. John and Colin interviewed Dr. Richard Clark at Highmark Health about what organizations need to do to prepare for the coming wave of AI solutions. They also touched on the unique work of a tech leader at a payer-provider organization. Read more…

This Week’s Health IT Jobs. With our growing focus on content at Healthcare IT Today, the time has come to shut down the Healthcare IT Central job board. Before we go, we wanted to share recent jobs we found, as health systems around the country are looking for help with athenahealth, Epic, MEDITECH, and Oracle deployments. Read more…

Bonus Features for March 24, 2024: Data infrastructure investments have 124% ROI; meanwhile, 85% of healthcare workers believe AI can improve the patient experience. Read more…

Funding and M&A Activity:

• WebMD acquired Healthwise, a patient and member health education and engagement company.
• Healthcare operations software maker RLDatix finalized its acquisition of Breitenbach Software, maker of workforce management solutions.
• Dental AI vendor Overjet raised more than $53 million in Series C funding.
• Patient support program provider Redi Health closed $14 million in Series B funding.

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our latest Healthcare IT Today Weekly Roundups.