8 Ways to Boost Rural Telehealth
Broader adoption of electronic health records and telehealth technology could improve rural Americans' access to quality health care, according to a report by the UnitedHealth Center for Health Reform & Modernization. The report lists eight ways to achieve those goals: Enhance broadband connectivity, improve and align reimbursement across payers, encourage greater physician adoption, use telemedicine to build primary care capacity in rural areas, increase choices for rural beneficiaries in how they access care, raise patient comfort levels with telemedicine technology and encourage its use in rural care models, update regulations governing use of telemedicine equipment and providers, and improve care coordination and patient safety in rural areas. — Visit www.unitedhealthgroup.com/reform
A Toolkit for Building a Health Information Exchange
The eHealth Initiative this summer released the latest phase of its Health Information Exchange Toolkit, an online resource to empower health care leaders in developing, adopting and operating an HIE. The primer addresses the next steps for starting an HIE: creating a sustainable model, technical aspects of connectivity, marketing and promoting HIEs, enhancing services and tracking progress. — Visit www.ehealthinitiative.org
Uncertainty Over How to Harness Social Media to Market Hospitals
Hospital marketers expect a 400 percent increase in use of digital media as their core communications channel by 2013, according to a survey by Acsys Interactive, a digital media consulting firm. Marketers foresee their greatest use of digital media in social media, Web video and secure patient portals. However, 91 percent of respondents currently feel unable to provide accurate social media metrics for their organizations. — Visit www.theprimacy.com/blog/acsys-interactive-is-now-primacy/
