What’s next.

The logistics and realities rural hospitals face have unique complexities vs. organizations in metropolitan or urban settings. The challenges of rising costs, new regulations, changing reimbursement models, clinician burnout, and staffing shortages are intensified in the rural community. Rural hospital risk compounded with the COVID-19 pandemic and surges . And yet, most rural health organizations […]

At the recent Health Management Academy’s (HMA) Chief Medical Information Officers (CMIO) meeting, a good portion of the discussion centered on the changing landscape of regulations and even more changes from CMS and ONC that are on the horizon. So, what changes are forthcoming? How do we keep up as an industry, and where do […]

The new normal, other than the donning of facemasks in public places and calls for frequent handwashing, is the spike in virtual doctor visits. At the recent Health Management Academy (HMA) CMIO Virtual Forum, many CMIO’s at various organizations shared their experiences on how they rapidly transitioned to telehealth. Whereas virtual doctor visits cannot immunize our […]

Until recently, just 10% of patients took advantage of telehealth in lieu of an in-person visit—but that is changing rapidly before our eyes. So many of us have been told to stay home, to work from home, to shelter in place. Following these guidelines means shifting more and more of our interactions to digital platforms […]

This post was previously posted on Healthcare IT News on October 11, 2019. Republished with permission. I’ve been writing recently about the financial well-being of rural and critical access hospitals: about their struggling to stay in business, and how establishing a clinical documentation improvement (CDI) program can help keep the doors open. The reasons for my interest […]

This post was previously posted on Healthcare IT News on February 12, 2019. Republished with permission. “I wear a lot of hats around here.” It’s a phrase that we all hear, and repeat, regularly, but it may be no truer than at rural and critical access hospitals. In these environments, the health information management (HIM) person may […]

This post was previously posted on Healthcare IT News on April 6, 2020. Republished with permission. Financial pressures, limited resources, and changing regulations contribute to bottom-line risk and the alarming result is often rural hospital failure and closure. In this new series from Dr. Robert Budman, we explore what’s behind this and, more importantly, what […]

The widespread availability of a diverse range of healthcare information technologies is staggering and awesome. Never before have healthcare providers had such vast and, indeed, good tools and technologies at their disposal—tools that promise improvements to patient outcomes, financial impact, sharing of useful data, and provider satisfaction at work. At the same time, however, too […]

This article was first published on November 1, 2019, by Health Data Management. Reposted with permission. Throughout this series, I wrote how critical access and rural hospitals face the same day-to-day struggles that larger healthcare organizations do. The difference is that the challenges are amplified in critical access settings because of limited resources. It’s no secret that many rural hospitals operate […]

This article was first published on October 1, 2019, by Health Data Management. Reposted with permission. Healthcare organizations continue to focus effort and attention on combating physician burnout to not only improve the health and wellbeing of providers, but also to have a positive impact on patient care, safety, satisfaction, and quality; physician retention and turnover; and organizational financial […]

This article was first published on July 15, 2019, by Health Data Management. Reposted with permission. Rural health facilities and critical access hospitals face the same inherent operating challenges as larger and urban organizations; the difference, however, is that the impact of each is heightened in more rural environments. Physician recruitment and retention are no different. The […]

This article was first published on July 15, 2019, by Health Data Management. Reposted with permission. Over my career, I have had the privilege of working in a wide variety of family medicine practices, emergency departments, urgent care centers, and hospitals around the globe and at organizations large and small. I find it highly rewarding to […]