Artificial IntelligenceFuture of Health CarePopulation HealthValue-Based Health Care
February 5, 2020

How AI Can Engage Consumers to Reduce Disease Risk: The Case of Atrial Fibrillation

In our last article, we assessed how AI could be used to achieve clinical success for individual conditions, and to apply the technology to broad cost reduction efforts and population health interventions. But here's the real test: Can we effectively apply AI technology to help patients better engage in lifestyle risk reduction—particularly for specific conditions at higher risk? To examine the feasibility and issues, let’s take a closer look at Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), an increasingly common and expensive condition. In AFib, the upper part of the heart (the atrium) has ineffectual contraction, causing sludging of the blood and lessened cardiac…
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Artificial IntelligenceFuture of Health CareRiskValue-Based Health Care
January 29, 2020

Can Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Reduce Health Care Costs?

All the experts’ 2020 health care technology predictions have one trend in common—more Artificial Intelligence. AI and its subset Machine Learning are tagged as the winning ticket to advances not only in clinical medicine and research, but also in administration and management. The hype promotes so many potential applications for AI that it begs for an answer to one of its key claims: Can AI reduce health care costs? I'm referring particularly to Artificial Intelligence that is beyond clinical medicine and new medical technology. AI focused on clinical medicine, from genomics to the latest radiology and cardiology diagnostic capabilities, uses…
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Future of Health CareRiskValue-Based Health Care
January 22, 2020

Can Hospitals Still Lead Health Care Under Risk?

As the millennium's third decade begins, Risk has taken hold as THE strategy for tackling health care costs. Virtually overnight (in health care years) the industry has moved—albeit not uniformly—to accept Risk. This transition is already beginning to impact hospitals and hospital-based systems, and raises serious questions about the viability of their role as the primary financial engine bankrolling health care operations, reforms and modernization. Just one year ago, the concept of provider risk in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) was anathema to most participants. Despite initial misgivings, however, most ACOs remained in the system after CMS pushed forward with its…
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Consumers & PatientsFuture of Health CareMedical Decision-MakingValue-Based Health Care
January 15, 2020

Can Consumers Be the Answer to Health Care Cost Control?

In the intense ramp-up to accepting Value-Based Health Care payment models that include financial risk, providers have implemented an array of technologies and programs to improve cost performance. They are in a race against time. Capitation is re-emerging as a dominant payment type under Medicare Value-Based Primary Care Models and commercial contracts. Alternative Payment Models demand payback for excess costs. In the crunch, however, the most important health care goal is getting lost: how to reduce long-term costs while improving patient outcomes. The most effective solutions will require more than just technology. They will require provider-consumer partnering, facilitated by consumer-focused…
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Consumers & PatientsFuture of Health CareValue-Based Health Care
January 9, 2020

Get the eBook: Turn Health Care Chaos into Value – Give Voice to Providers and Consumers

Are we on a real path to reducing health care costs and improving our citizens' health? Those were stated goals in the early 2000s that developed into what is now called Value-Based Health Care (VBHC). VBHC has come to mean a major reform effort to slow the pace of cost increases through changes in incentives for both providers and health care consumers. So far, however, the gains have fallen short of expectations. VBHC reforms require significant changes in the role of providers and consumers in order to succeed. These role changes are evolving too slowly. Health care costs continue to…
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