Under the guise of employee wellness, many employers are giving their employees wearables such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch. The growth in the work-place wellness movement has been shown to pay off through decreased healthcare expenditures by employees and their dependents as well as a boost in morale. However, a host of legal and ethical issues could arise from the data, e.g. number of daily steps, heart rate if employers have access to it.
Read more here.
The beginning of each new year can be seen as a clean slate. It’s also a time to start speculating on what some of the major impacts could be for the upcoming year. According to this article, here are three predictions:
1) ACA will not go away regardless of who wins the 2016 presidential election
2) We’re not out of the water yet w/ICD-10 related issues and impacts
3) The Federal Government will take a stance on the wave of major payer consolidations.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
30% of Medicare payments are now being reimbursed on alternative payment models such as ACOs and no longer tied to fee-for-service payments. HHS set this goal beginning of 2015 w/a target date of the end of 2016. Read more here.
Cyber attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated and disguised as normal activities. A seemingly innocuous email attachment could unleash a wave of malicious activity that permeates an entire organization’s IT infrastructure. Rich sent this out to all associates but it’s worth mentioning again.
Think twice before opening an email and especially any attachments from a sender that you do not know.
It is no secret that Steve Jobs made a huge impact on how we go about doing routine tasks today. For example, receiving a (cell) phone call, watching tv shows and movies (iTunes), and listening to music (iPod). What would he have said about the healthcare industry? Here is an interesting interview of someone who had the fortune of meeting him.
