Far and away, the industry that pops up the most in discussions of big data is health care. It's not surprising, if you think about it. Lots of disparate sources of data, much of it unstructured. An industry dying to become more cost-effective – or, at least, less wasteful. And an onslaught of new devices designed to automate the process of collecting data, on order to keep professionals from having to be on hand to do so. Recently, there's been an even bigger spate of articles about the intersection of big data and health care. The question is, what's the takeaway for other industries?
Optum, the tech unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc. that was hired to repair the federal health insurance exchange after HealthCare.gov's disastrous launch two years ago, has declared its work complete. The Wall Street Journal reports that Optum's announcement this week comes as HealthCare.gov performed significantly better in its second sign-up period. The company was hired in October 2013 after the visitors endured long waits and major tech problems trying to sign up for insurance. Optum had worked on the original HealthCare.gov, but its software was one of the few bits that worked right from the start.
Medicare telemedicine reimbursements totaled $13.9 million in calendar year 2014—the highest level to date. But, critics argue that the figure is nowhere near where it should be. The 2014 payments included $12,482,270 in provider fees at the distant site (the location of the telemedicine provider) and $1,452,160 for originating site fees (the location of the patient). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services provided the data to the Robert J. Waters Center for Telehealth and e-Health Law (CTeL), a legal and regulatory organization that focuses on issues impacting the advancement of telehealth.
A tech event in downtown D.C. this week aimed to highlight how tech innovators are helping the health industry finally join the digital revolution, but it also revealed some of the challenges they have to overcome to do that. One young executive of a New York-based startup made his pitch at 1776's Challenge Cup event Wednesday for a new app called Pager, an urgent care house-call service. People have called it "the Uber for doctors," founding partner Toby Hervey enthusiastically told the crowd during the tech week's health-themed day sponsored by MedStar Health. "We think on-demand health care can be more effective than an office visit," Hervey said.
Doctors called it the black hole. If their low-income or uninsured patients needed specialty care, they put in a referral to the massive Los Angeles County health care bureaucracy and then waited — for weeks or even months. It could take eight months to see a neurologist, more than three to see a cardiologist. To speed things up, doctors at county and community clinics urged their patients to go straight to the emergency room, the unofficial back door for specialist appointments. That way, patients could bypass the long waits and get the recommended colonoscopy or CT scan. But that route was expensive and burdensome to ERs.
In recent years, advancing technology has changed the way we go about our daily lives. From reading books on tablet devices to video chatting with a friend from afar, technology has ushered in new eras in our way of life. But, how is technology shaping the world of health care? Health care experts joined "St. Louis on the Air" host Don Marsh to discuss how telemedicine- virtual patient-doctor interaction- is changing the industry. Dr. Tom Hale, executive medical director of Mercy Virtual in St. Louis, explained that Mercy plans to introduce The Virtual Care Center, a 120,000-square-foot center that will focus on providing telemedical support to patients.