Healthcare providers know that accomplishing their missions in a competitive marketplace means concentrating their talent and experience on what they do best – delivering high-quality patient care. Healthcare providers, like businesses in other industries, increasingly are off-loading noncore support functions and business processes to vendors who can perform them better, faster and cheaper. Outsourced business [...]

Today new medical advances in the healthcare industry are dramatically changing the way care is provided to patients. At the same time, healthcare organizations are under pressure to cut costs, increase productivity and improve patient care. Connected healthcare applications, including electronic health records, that address these issues and streamline information and communications at the point [...]

Alacare Home Health & Hospice™ understands that caring for those in need while delivering outstanding service is essential to their organization’s success. That’s why they have equipped their visiting nurses with laptops. “Our nurses are able to focus on patients’ care instead of having to spend a lot of extra time looking for information. It’s [...]

Gaston Memorial Hospital is a 435-bed, independent not-for-profit hospital that serves its community in North Carolina. The hospital provides an expansive, surgical suite with all the latest advancements. And like many other hospitals, Gaston has decided to add mobile PCs to improve the quality of care their patients receive from their hospital. That’s why Gaston [...]

The task of choosing technologies for an organization varies greatly from doing it for an electronic health record (EHR). The tasks themselves are similar, but the focus, priorities and evaluative criteria for selecting technologies are not. You need to define the community to be served by the EHR, understand existing assets to build upon, figure [...]

Old habits, not technology, are today’s roadblocks for EHR adoption and use. Physicians traditionally handwrite orders or tell someone else what to order. Clerical personnel typically transcribe orders into the system and maybe a nurse validates the order.When physicians need a test result they ask a nurse or clerk to print it. Today everything can [...]

Many Choices, Real Benefits Desktops, tablet PCs, mobile laptops, computers on wheels, handheld devices — technology devices that access an EHR system provide a universe of opportunity. Despite the real benefits these devices offer, the devil is in the details. How can a CMIO or CIO navigate the technology needs of a healthcare organization based [...]

HCT: What do you see as the current state of payerprovider collaboration in the United States today? Bill Bruning: The Mid-America Coalition on Health Care is virtually unique among employer coalitions in the country in that we are focused on a fully collaborative model. We include all health care stakeholders and agree to take on [...]

Players

Highmark

Highmark Inc., a Pennsylvania-based nonprofit corporation, provides a range of insurance products to its approximately 23 million people nationwide.

Highmark operates as Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield in western Pennsylvania and as Highmark Blue Shield in the rest of the state, partnering with Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania and Independence Blue Cross.