The COVID crisis exposed just how antiquated and ill-equipped many systems are to handle the unprecedented demand. While private-sector businesses beefed up the ability to stream TV shows, created apps for food deliveries, and moved offices online, some public health officials tracked COVID outbreaks by fax machine.
For years, we’ve mostly heard about how electronic health records systems have made clinicians’ lives a nightmare. But recently, innovators have found ways to tap their potential to save time and costs and improve quality.
Here’s what payers and providers should look for as they update their core platform strategies for the new normal in healthcare, say Bill Shea and Patricia Birch, leaders within Cognizant Consulting’s Healthcare Practice.
The pandemic has catalyzed significant changes in the healthcare industry, particularly on the technology front as patients, payers and providers look for ever-newer ways of delivering, receiving and being reimbursed for care.
Such incidents helped make 2021 a record year for data breaches. Data exposure events, in which sensitive data is left sitting online, were responsible for cybersecurity incidents involving an estimated 164 million of the 294 million people victimized in 2021.
Months before anyone at Cerner Corp. ever heard from Oracle about a possible acquisition, the Kansas City healthcare IT firm rebuffed a separate takeover attempt