Vedant Bhosale

IV robotics and workflow preparation technology is critical to the advancement of patient safety and accuracy in IV compounding. But while the need is widely recognized, barriers to adoption – including tight budgets, bandwidth constraints, and lack of regulations or requirements – continue to persist.

Industry leaders, patient safety advocates, and policy activists gathered in Pittsburgh last month for the IV TRUST Summit – an exclusive event intended to further the adoption of IV automation to improve the safety, accuracy, and availability of sterile compounds. Among those leading the charge is Mark Neuenschwander.

No stranger to patient safety advocacy, Neuenschwander has spent more than three decades promoting development and deployment of medication safety technologies. His work to drive adoption of bar code medication administration (BCMA) changed point of care practice and has been honored by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices’ Lifetime Achievement Award.

Neuenschwander has now shifted focus to a new area of patient care safety – IV compounding.  As founding director of the THRIV Coalition for IV Accuracy, he is rallying healthcare stakeholders to promote universal adoption and consistent utilization of workflow management systems and robotics to support safety and accuracy in IV preparations. “I formed the THRIV Coalition to champion bar code IV preparation technologies just as we had with administration technologies,” Neuenschwander said during his presentation.

The Coalition has developed the THRIV 5, a checklist of minimum criteria for pharmacy leaders to consider when planning for adoption of IV compounding technology.

Workflow Management Software – designed to guide compounders and/or robotics step-by-step through IV “recipes” with forcing functions to drive accuracy at each step of the process

Bar Code Scanning – processes designed as a forcing function to ensure all components are the correct ingredients

Volume Verification – employing a variety of tools, including in-process image capture, gravimetrics, volumetrics, and optical volume recognition, to verify volumes of base solutions and additives are correct

Auto Labeling – for scanning at the point of administration, produced only after all the steps have been verified as having been accurately fulfilled

Auto Documentation – recording and time-stamping each step of the preparation to support accuracy throughout the process

THRIV champions the universal adoption and consistent utilization of IV workflow management systems through advocacy and outreach to healthcare providers, while also working with other industry advocates, government entities, and accrediting bodies to drive compelling standards and compliance, recognizing the criteria outlined in the Coalition’s checklist. The hope is, that similar to the journey to BCMA, the industry will move from voluntary utilization to requiring the technology.   

“I believe that we’ve had some really good robotic development but in terms of adopting and in terms of refining, I think we are just entering the golden age,” Neuenschwander said.

 “There are compelling benefits to doing things robotically – eliminating opportunities for error, reducing risk of product contamination, and preventing harm to techs or the preparer,” he continued. “We need to persist in telling the story.”

Watch the full presentation here and visit www.thrivcoalition.org to download the full checklist and learn more about how you can join advocacy efforts.
The post Unifying the Industry Around the Need for IV Automation appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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As health systems face mounting pressure to cut costs without compromising care, a growing number are turning to AI in the mid-revenue cycle. Technology investments have to do more than promise value, however — they must prove it.

A new 2025 KLAS Second Look Report suggests that Xsolis’ Dragonfly, the next generation of the company’s AI-driven platform that improves medical necessity decision-making, is hitting the mark, delivering measurable outcomes to hospitals and health systems. In anonymized client interviews with KLAS, Dragonfly users report improved denial rates, reduced length of stay (LOS), and rapidly achieved return on investment — all while enhancing payer-provider collaboration.

Denials: A $20 Billion Drain

Preventable denials aren’t just an administrative headache — they’re a debilitating financial liability. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that roughly 1 in 5 adults encountered a health insurance denial in 2023, with adjudication and appeals costing health systems nearly $20 billion annually. Around half of denials are ultimately overturned, which equates to unnecessary and unsustainable administrative waste for both payer and provider organizations, leading to patient confusion and frustration about their billing experience.

In this context, 89% of Xsolis users surveyed by KLAS say they rely on its AI to minimize preventable denials. Nearly 9 in 10 saw outcomes within the first year of implementation, a critical benchmark for hospital executives wary of long tech ramp-ups. Moreover, 91% reported being satisfied or highly satisfied with overall performance — a strong signal in a tech market suffering from vendor fatigue and confusion amidst heightened AI promises.

Payer-Provider Alignment at Scale

Operational friction between payers and providers not only drags down revenue cycle performance, but it also compromises the patient experience. With two-thirds of Xsolis’ 500+ hospital clients now sharing an AI platform with their networked health plans, its AI-driven Dragonfly platform is helping to bridge that gap.

The platform goes beyond workflow automation. It draws from patient information in the EHR to predict the appropriate level of care for each patient, presented through shared views of Xsolis’ proprietary Care Level Score™, which is updated in real-time. This enables payers and providers to speak the same language, reducing administrative back-and-forth. The AI platform is fueled by its access to the full scope of clinical data on more than 300 million unique patient encounters, and it has delivered more than 2.7 billion predictions to date.

According to the KLAS report, 78% of respondents now use the platform for payer-provider communication, helping to streamline approvals, reduce patient status confusion, and ultimately accelerate discharge planning.

Cutting Length of Stay Without Cutting Corners

Length of stay (LOS) is a top operational lever for hospital financial leaders, directly impacting bed availability, throughput, and staffing efficiency. Clients interviewed by KLAS credit Xsolis with helping them optimize LOS and observation rates while accelerating alignment on care decisions. The Dragonfly platform also includes new functionality — like the Navigate product line, which targets LOS reductions, and Revenue Integrity Insights, advanced analytics that target financial recovery.

Also new to the Dragonfly platform is the addition of generative AI, which complements the platform’s predictive AI models. New generative AI features further assist clinical and revenue cycle teams by surfacing insights and streamlining documentation. For example, 68% faster medical necessity reviews were reported during a health system’s generative AI pilot experience.

Built for Integration and Scale

Ease of implementation and integration remain deal-breakers for many health systems evaluating tech platforms. KLAS respondents cited Xsolis’ ability to integrate seamlessly with EHRs, along with responsive customer service and executive involvement, as top reasons for selecting the platform.

Aside from evaluations of its platform, Xsolis has also been recognized by KLAS as No. 1 Best in KLAS for Physician Advisory Services for four years, as a KLAS Top 5 Emerging Solution for reducing the cost of care, and for its leadership with payer-provider collaboration with the KLAS Points of Light case study initiative.

The Bottom Line

Hospitals can’t afford long implementations or soft ROI. According to the latest KLAS data, Xsolis delivers rapid, tangible results in high-stakes areas like denials, length of stay, and payer-provider communication. With the overwhelming majority of users seeing measurable improvements within 12 months and nearly all reporting satisfaction with platform performance, Xsolis offers a compelling blueprint for using AI to address today’s mid-revenue cycle pain points.

Read the full KLAS report or download the infographic highlighting key take-aways.
The post AI That Pays Off: How Health Systems Are Reducing Avoidable Denials with Mid-Revenue Cycle Tech appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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Healthcare IT leaders shoulder a staggering range of responsibilities. They must support the daily technology needs of sprawling health systems, safeguard patient data, meet clinical and financial objectives, and drive long-term digital transformation, all while keeping pace with rapid innovation. And they’re doing it within an increasingly fragmented ecosystem, where hundreds of disconnected point solutions often compete rather than coordinate.

Despite these challenges, IT leaders remain grounded, pragmatic problem solvers. They work to advance their organization’s immediate goals under intense financial pressure, even as they lay the foundation for long-term transformation. That future demands a scalable IT infrastructure and streamlined, integrated solutions — tools that enable more efficient operations and unlock new possibilities for care delivery.

The urgent need to streamline healthcare IT and reframe its role in operations was a central theme at the 2025 symplr Healthcare Operations Summit, held in partnership with Becker’s Healthcare. The event brought together IT and operational leaders from across the country to explore how health system leaders can leverage technology to transform healthcare delivery.

Key insights from the summit are summarized below.

Where health system priorities meet the IT roadmap

symplr CEO BJ Schaknowski summarized four ubiquitous challenges faced by most U.S. healthcare organizations:

Persistent labor shortages, particularly among clinicians, requiring enhanced productivity

Cost pressures

Managing the complexity of an overwhelming number of IT solutions

Navigating and maintaining increasing security threats

In a real-time poll during symplr’s summit, healthcare IT leaders ranked financial pressures as their most significant challenge.

These organizational pressures shape nearly every priority on an IT leader’s agenda. They’re not only the champions of technology, driving innovation to address labor, clinical, financial, and operational challenges — they’re also the executors. Beyond advocating for digital solutions, they lead cross-functional teams through the complex processes of selecting, deploying, and optimizing them.

 Zafar Chaudry, MD, senior vice president, chief digital officer and CIO at Seattle Children’s, emphasized that before implementing technology, IT leaders must first determine the problem they’re trying to solve. “If you’re going to drive change in your organization . . . it’s going to be because you understand what problems people in the organization have,” he said.

Too much tech, too little efficiency

Technology has become integral to solving healthcare’s most pervasive problems and operational bottlenecks, but the sheer number of tech solutions used across health systems is hurting productivity.

Todd Jones, director of market intelligence at symplr, highlighted key findings from the Compass Survey: health systems often rely on hundreds of IT solutions (some even reporting more than 1,000), and 80% of IT leaders see an opportunity to consolidate them. As health systems grow more digitally complex, addressing this sprawl has become increasingly critical. The proliferation of point solutions means more vendor contracts, multiple logins, inconsistent user interfaces, varied patching processes, and fragmented security protocols. The result is a highly complex environment that reduces efficiency, heightens cybersecurity risk, and increases cost.

“Fragmented processes and technology, that’s where inefficiency resides,” said Terri Hanlon-Bremer, MSN, RN, executive vice president and system COO at Cincinnati-based TriHealth. “If we can resolve that, it would make finances better.”

Tools that work for healthcare teams — not against them

While health systems have made significant strides in adopting clinical technologies, progress on the operational front has often lagged. Many organizations still rely on outdated tools that strain workflows and limit visibility across departments. Amy Olson, group vice president of business applications at Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.), noted that despite decades of tech adoption, health systems continue to face challenges in implementing effective operational solutions.

Ms. Olson reflected on the early days of clinical operations-focused innovation — first came enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) to support growth, followed by widespread adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). As EHRs matured, many health systems upgraded or replaced them. Then came the adoption of various revenue cycle management tools. However, during this time, tools that focused on operations weren’t as highly prioritized, and many core operational technologies remained unchanged.

“We never got to the rest of the operational technologies,” Ms. Olson said. “They were ‘good enough,’ but they are not getting us where we need to go. Now is the time to bring these disparate systems together to make it easier.”

Brad Shaink, executive director of innovation and business applications at Houston Methodist, said his team is focused on building the “hospital of the future,” which is enabled by smart tools. “When we think about technology, it’s to enable caregivers and individuals to do more,” he said.

For Ms. Olson, technology is more than a means to improve financial performance; it’s a powerful enabler of workforce well-being. She views streamlined systems as a way to reduce staff burnout and improve retention. “If you’re not burning your people out, if you’re not turning them over as fast, there’s real money there,” Ms. Olson said.

‘The next frontier’ in streamlining operations

Just as IT leaders aim to solve healthcare’s most pressing operational challenges, symplr is equally committed to delivering tools that ease complexity, enhance efficiency, and support sustainable systemwide improvement.

“We help deliver value by solving problems that you can’t or don’t want to solve yourself — typically with greater impact than you might otherwise achieve,” said Mr. Schaknowski.

The symplr Operations Platform marks a shift from fragmented point solutions to a unified, integrated approach to healthcare operations. Tony DiGiorgio, symplr’s chief architect, described the platform as a cloud-based solution developed in partnership with AWS and designed to support security, governance, compliance, and scalability.

The emphasis on scalability resonates with Chris Sacinski, vice president of IT applications at Advocate Health. When reviewing IT solutions, Mr. Sacinski said cybersecurity is the most important factor, but this has become table stakes. After cybersecurity, he prioritizes scalability along two dimensions: the ability of a vendor’s product to scale with the organization’s size, scope, and data needs, and the scalability of the operational business model itself.

Beyond scalability, the infrastructure and ecosystem of symplr’s Operations Platform support a consistent user experience and include an API-first design for interoperability and extensibility. It also powers a centralized data platform that turns information into actionable insights. Building on this foundation, symplr is integrating AI within a standardized framework.

The platform’s goal is to drive efficiencies across operations. “We tie our solutions together to help remove waste from the process and drive efficiencies,” said Nydia Boswell, vice president of product management at symplr.

This shared vision underscores a broader shift in healthcare IT: moving from fragmented tools to integrated solutions that truly streamline operations. As symplr focuses on eliminating waste and improving efficiency, leaders recognize that the moment for meaningful transformation has arrived.

“It’s the next frontier,” Ms. Olson said. “It’s what we’ve always wanted to get to. We’ve been saying it for 10 years, but there was always something else. Now we’re there.”

To learn more about symplr, visit www.symplr.com.
The post From Fragmentation to Integration: Inside the Push to Simplify Healthcare IT appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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Clinicians are the foundation of care delivery, but today’s healthcare environment often impedes rather than supports them. Nurses, physicians, advanced practice providers, pharmacists, and technicians encounter daily frustrations driven by fragmented systems and inefficient operations. These issues can erode morale, contribute to burnout, and ultimately, jeopardize patient care.

Technology has the power to change that. When thoughtfully implemented, it can alleviate operational burdens and restore time to what clinicians value most: spending meaningful time connecting with patients. However, transformation that overlooks the clinician experience can fall flat, or worse, deepen existing pain points.

Forward-thinking hospitals and health systems understand that meaningful change must begin with clinicians at the center. When operational and technological strategies are aligned with frontline insights, transformation becomes a powerful catalyst that amplifies both care quality and workforce well-being.

This imperative was at the heart of the 2025 symplr Healthcare Operations Summit, hosted in partnership with Becker’s Healthcare. The event convened clinical, operational, and IT leaders from across the country to explore how technology can reshape healthcare delivery and ease the path forward for clinicians.

What follows are key takeaways from the discussion.

Staffing and operational complexity demand automation, collaboration

Clinicians face unrelenting pressures in care delivery. While this isn’t new, the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath have brought heightened attention to pervasive staffing shortages, burnout, and retention challenges.

“Clinicians are getting directions from everyone, and there is so much administrative burden they are dealing with every day,” said Michelle James, BSN, RN, senior vice president for patient care services and chief nursing officer at PeaceHealth (Vancouver, Wash.). “They don’t have a lot of joy in their job.”

Tracy Gosselin, PhD, RN, senior vice president and chief nurse executive at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, described a healthcare environment defined by growing complexity. She said more patients, increased volume, and higher acuity are now the norm. These mounting pressures are also contributing to a troubling rise in verbal and physical abuse toward clinicians — with healthcare workers now five times more likely to experience a workplace violence injury than the average U.S. worker.

Meanwhile, clinical leaders are navigating fiscal headwinds and highly competitive labor markets. “What’s going to give us increased retention, nurse satisfaction, and the desire to go to work every day?” said Katie Barr, MSN, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing informatics officer at Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health. “We need to find ways to bring the joy back.”

To address these challenges, many healthcare organizations are deploying initiatives to reduce administrative burden. symplr CEO BJ Schaknowski cited the 2024 symplr Compass Survey Report, which shows that clinicians spend about 51 minutes per day (almost five hours per week) on non-value-added administrative tasks. Automating these tasks would give clinicians more room to focus, recharge, and navigate their day with fewer disruptions. It would also enhance their capacity and overall productivity.

Another core tenet guiding healthcare strategy: serving on the front lines is never a solo endeavor. High-quality care depends on deeply coordinated teamwork among physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, technicians, and other clinical staff.

“We talk about quality and patient safety in the context of being a team sport,” said Omar Hasan, MD, chief quality officer at MaineHealth (Portland).

This cohesive, collaborative team extends well beyond clinicians. Clinical leaders must partner with functions such as IT, finance, and the supply chain. “I have the opportunity to lead the supply improvement work across our system,” said Vi-Anne Antrum, DNP, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing officer at Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.). “We’re looking to pair and integrate our supply chain colleagues with clinical operations. That’s a very important relationship.”

Susan Grant, DNP, RN, chief clinical officer at symplr, emphasized that team success requires alignment and information sharing, along with supportive tools and resources. “It’s about making sure they have what they need when they need it,” she said. “It’s about the right staff with the right stuff.”

Technology that supports clinicians should be a ‘force multiplier’

Mr. Schaknowski suggested that, to date, operational technologies in healthcare have fallen short. “Everyone realizes that technology can be a great enabler, but it hasn’t been,” he said. While clinicians are mission-driven and adaptable, he noted they’re “sick of technology being forced upon them as the next great thing.”

In many cases, healthcare technology has complicated clinicians’ workflows, taking them away from patients and contributing to burnout and low engagement.

“What we’ve done over time is we just keep adding on, but we’ve taken nothing away,” Ms. James of PeaceHealth said, referring to the proliferation of disconnected technologies. The 2024 symplr Compass Survey Report confirms this, indicating that health systems typically use hundreds of different applications.

Mr. Schaknowski reiterated there’s a better way.

“We’ve got to make technology a force multiplier for our people, not a punishment,” he said. “When you look at the technology available, whether it’s in workflow consolidation, application rationalization, some of the generative or large language AI tools. We have a real opportunity to make clinicians more productive and more engaged.”

Clinicians drive innovation or it stalls

Leaders at the summit acknowledged that clinicians generally understand the need for operational transformation, hopeful that it will decrease burden, improve care delivery, and result in better outcomes.

But how clinicians are engaged in operational transformation and IT solutions matters. “It needs to be clinically led and IT enabled,” Ms. James said, underscoring that, at the very least, clinicians need a major voice in the transformation process.

Dr. Gosselin of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center emphasized that successful transformation doesn’t begin with technology; it starts by engaging key stakeholders in problem-solving. “It starts with going to the clinician base and the non-clinician base and asking, ‘What are the processes we need to fix?’ Then, [it requires] engaging people in a dialog.”

True transformation requires standardization and integration

Being motivated to transform clinical operations is not enough. Because of widespread fragmentation and variation in healthcare environments, standardization is a prerequisite to transformation.

“We want every patient across our state, across our footprint, who comes to a MaineHealth facility to have the same quality of care and the exact same experience. But this cannot happen without a measure of standardization,” Dr. Hasan said, highlighting that workforce shortages have often necessitated clinicians work at several different facilities. “We have to standardize. There is no other choice.”

When an enterprise becomes more standardized, it is possible to become more integrated. In terms of operations, Dr. Hasan said well-planned structures and well-designed standardized processes produce the best outcomes.

Dr. Antrum of Cone Health said that operational standardization, combined with tight integration of team members from different disciplines, has yielded significant benefits for the health system. It has reduced silos, improved information sharing, and enhanced care delivery. “It allows us to maximize the efficiency of our staff and our team to ensure a more standardized quality of care for our patients,” Dr. Antrum said.

Change without culture fails: the leadership mandate

Clinical leaders are clear: operational transformation doesn’t mean just implementing technology.

“To accomplish transformation, there are many things we need to do; among them, are change management and stakeholder engagement,” said Tony Seupaul, MD, executive vice president and chief physician executive at Roanoke, Va.-based Carilion Clinic.

Ms. Barr of Advocate Health concurred that change management, including listening to clinicians and helping them understand the reasons for change, is a core trait of operationally driven initiatives. She said the importance of change management is widely understood, but at times, leaders become so focused on driving change that they forget the basic principles of change management and fail to bring front-line team members along.

At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, operational changes and technology investments have corresponded with culture change. Dr. Gosselin mentioned incorporating “humble inquiry” into the organization’s culture, where staff are encouraged to ask questions to understand the “why” behind changes.

How interoperability and automation improve operations

A critical but often overlooked operational responsibility of clinical leaders is overseeing credentialing.

Dr. Seupal shared insights from his own journey toward recognizing credentialing as a foundational element of care delivery, as providers must be credentialed and privileged to deliver care at the bedside and to get reimbursed by payers.

Historically, credentialing and privileging have been slow, manual, and time-consuming processes. “There are opportunities to streamline credentialing,” Dr. Seupal said. “It can be an enabler for better care, better access, and better quality and safety in your health system.”

Nydia Boswell, vice president of product management at symplr, explained how the symplr Operations Platform will tie together multiple solutions to improve the full lifecycle of the provider, from onboarding through offboarding. This begins with symplr Recruiting, which streamlines intake and information gathering about a clinical candidate. When a candidate is hired, their information can be automatically sent to the credentialing team in symplr Provider, without needing to reenter this information, and with no lag time. This ensures the credentialing process is started as quickly as possible.

Once credentialed and privileged, provider information can be sent to the organization’s patient-facing directory to begin marketing providers to patients and to meet compliance and regulatory needs. The newly active provider is then automatically included in the organization’s scheduling system to get them seeing patients as quickly as possible.

Recruiting, credentialing, onboarding, and scheduling are automated and simplified through the symplr Operations Platform, which eliminates waste and reduces administrative burden, Ms. Boswell said. This frees clinicians to focus on patient care and engage in more strategic, high-value work. By improving efficiency, lowering costs, and minimizing risk, the platform supports operational transformation — making care delivery more meaningful and less encumbered for clinicians.

“Operations is the glue and the processes that ensure we have the right people with the right skills at the right time with the right tools to yield the patient outcomes we’re trying to achieve,” Dr. Grant said.

To learn more about symplr visit www.symplr.com.

The post Clinicians at the Core: How Smarter Operations Accelerate Impact appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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Every ~20 seconds in the U.S a woman aged 50 or older suffers a fracture.1 These fractures result in higher rates of hospitalization than heart attack, stroke, or breast cancer, while having potentially life-altering consequences for patients.2,3,4

Despite increasing fracture rates, ~4 out of 5 postmenopausal women remain undiagnosed and untreated for osteoporosis one year after fracture.5,* To address this gap, health institutions need effective systems to follow up with and treat at-risk patients. 

At Becker’s 12th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable and in a new bone health podcast sponsored by Amgen, two experts shared insights from their successful post-fracture care programs.

Andrea Singer, MD, FACP, CCD, from MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, and Andrea Fox, DMSc, MMS, MHA, PA-C, from Stanford Health Care, sat down with Christen Buseman, PhD, director of IDN strategy and marketing for Amgen, to discuss strategies that have transformed patient care management at their institutions.

1) Taking a multidisciplinary approach

The traditional care journey often fails to provide appropriate treatment and education after a patient experiences a fracture.[6] This gap exists largely because it’s unclear which specialty should take responsibility for osteoporosis follow-up, according to Singer and Fox.

“Since osteoporosis doesn’t belong to any one specialty, the beauty of that is anyone can take charge. The other side of the sword is everybody thinks somebody else is going to take care of it,” Singer said.

To prevent patients from falling through the cracks, cross-specialty collaboration is crucial. At Stanford, Fox engaged with various teams to enhance referrals to the program and ensure comprehensive care.

She also highlighted how remote care advancements have expanded access for patients in areas lacking specialists.

2) Building a scalable foundation

After securing pilot funding to study post-fracture care follow-up rates at MedStar, Singer recognized the need for systemwide change. “We were following only 19% of people 50 years or older after a fracture,” she said during the conference.

She garnered support for a comprehensive post-fracture care program model now being scaled throughout the system, with established North and South regional programs. She achieved this by demonstrating the need, developing the service, building the team and establishing the business model. To lay the groundwork for a successful program, she noted that while scaling depends on a variety of factors, it’s critical to establish success metrics early so you can quantify the program’s impact for leadership.

3) Framing as a quality improvement initiative

“Making this a quality improvement project to align with hospital initiatives got the attention of the top administrators,” Fox said.

Fox told conference attendees that her team started the program by identifying the highest-risk patients coming into Stanford’s service lines.

The program evolved to focus on identifying, diagnosing and managing treatment as part of long-term chronic disease management, which is an important mindset to adopt, Fox said.

“We started with none of our trauma orthopedic hip fracture patients being referred for follow-up care, and now 86% of patients with hip fractures are referred to my program within six months,” Fox noted.

“These patients are so grateful for the care that they’re receiving and that there’s a program in place like this –they can’t believe it. They’re 82 years old coming in and they say, ‘No one has ever talked to me about my bones before.’”

To learn more about how health systems are working to improve post-fracture care programs, listen to our new podcast episode sponsored by Amgen featuring Andrea Singer and Andrea Fox.

* Data are from an anonymized patient claims dataset from IQVIA for women over age 50 diagnosed with or treated for osteoporosis, had a fragility fracture, or with at least one medical or pharmacy claim between January 2019 – December 2023. Fractures were counted if there was a diagnosis or procedure code for a fragility fracture of the hip, vertebra, femur, pelvis, humerus, radius/ulna, tibia/fibula, or clavicle. For patients with at least one fragility fracture between January 2019–December 2022, claims records were examined for post-fracture care, including the number of patients with a diagnosis code, DXA scan code, or a prescription for an osteoporosis treatment.

1 Data on file, Amgen, 2024.

2 Singer A, et al. Mayo Clin Proc. 2015; 90:53-62.​

3 Cosman F, et al. Osteoporos Int. 2014; 25(10):2359-81.

4 Inacio MCS, et al. TPJ. 2015; 19(3):29-36.

5 Data on file, Amgen, 2024.

6 Bennett MJ, Center JR, Perry L. Exploring barriers and opportunities to improve osteoporosis care across the acute-to-primary care interface: a qualitative study. Osteoporos Int. 2023 Jul;34(7):1249-1262.
The post A population health approach to postmenopausal osteoporosis and establishing a post fracture care program appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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Introduction

Hospitals lose millions of dollars each year due to incomplete or inaccurate charge capture in the operating room. From missed implants and barcode scanning failures to delays in documentation and item master mismatches, these breakdowns directly erode revenue and compliance. In a healthcare economy defined by shrinking margins and expanding bundled payments, surgical charge capture is no longer just a documentation task—it’s a financial imperative.

A recent Becker’s Healthcare webinar featured Shlomo Matityaho, CEO of IDENTI Medical, and Lisa Miller, Chief Sales Officer and revenue cycle expert, to explore how IDENTI’s Snap&Go AI camera platform is transforming surgical charge capture and driving significant financial gains for hospitals.

AI Closes the Loop on Missed Charges

Manual workflows and barcode-based tools continue to leave gaps in documentation. Ms. Miller highlighted common issues such as missed charges for high-cost implants, miscoded items, reliance on “miscellaneous” billing, and delayed data entry after surgery. These inefficiencies directly impact reimbursement. For example, an orthopedic unit performing 20 surgeries a day could lose over $1.2 million annually from just four missed implant charges per day.

IDENTI’s Snap&Go leverages computer vision and AI to capture item-level details at the point of use. Nurses simply place an item under the Snap&Go camera, which automatically records lot number, expiration date, and manufacturer—no scanning, typing, or dropdowns required. Every item is validated and billed correctly, regardless of whether it is bill-only, consignment, or owned stock. According to Miller, this level of automation ensures 100% documentation of high-value implants without adding any burden to clinical staff. Hospitals gain the transparency needed to negotiate effectively with managed care payers, improve performance in bundled payment models, and truly understand case-level profitability.

Matityaho emphasized the simplicity of the process: the interaction between nurse and device is driven entirely by a green or red light. In three seconds, Snap&Go captures and confirms usage without disrupting workflow and stores the image as proof of use.

Real-Time Safety and Audit Readiness

Snap&Go provides a complete audit trail for every implant, reducing payment disputes and increasing billing accuracy. It flags expired or recalled items before use, updates the item master in real time, and tracks bill-only and consigned stock with precision. Miller noted that nearly 25% of OR staff have encountered issues with expired implants. Snap&Go eliminates that risk by embedding safety checks directly into the documentation process. Adoption is high because the system collects accurate, complete information automatically, eliminating the need to chase data after the case. Snap&Go integrates easily with leading EHR and ERP systems, including Epic, Meditech, Workday, and Infor. Implementation typically takes up to 7 days, including training the staff, with many hospitals seeing measurable financial results after the first 100 cases. Miller shared that some hospitals reported full ROI in just a few weeks. One health system, for example, recovered $1.8 million in revenue in a single service line by improving implant documentation and charge visibility.

With CMS’s new TEAMS bundled payment model set to begin in 2026, hospitals will be required to document implant usage with greater precision to optimize reimbursement. Snap&Go positions health systems to meet this challenge by automating UDI capture and aligning OR documentation with financial and clinical outcomes.

Designed for Nurses, Backed by Data

Snap&Go is designed for ease of use, requiring no learning curve. It captures untagged and unbarcoded items like screws and plates, digitizes handwritten or printed vendor count sheets, and recognizes off-catalog or one-time-use implants. This simplicity ensures high adoption among clinical staff while delivering financial and operational benefits.Hospitals using Snap&Go report a 75% to 85% increase in charge capture accuracy, a 15% to 30% reduction in charge entry time, and a 20% to 30% drop in carve-out denials. UDI and usage data completeness reach 99%. Miller summed it up: in a healthcare environment where every dollar counts, AI-powered charge capture in the OR is no longer optional—it’s essential.

As hospitals continue to digitize their operations, Snap&Go is setting a new standard for surgical revenue capture. By removing long-standing documentation barriers, it enables hospitals to reclaim lost revenue, improve payer positioning, and strengthen data integrity across the care continuum. Miller concluded that within the next few years, this technology will become the standard for surgical documentation on the business side of healthcare.

The post Snap & Charge: How AI Cameras in the OR Reclaim Lost Revenue appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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As multi-cancer early detection (MCED) testing gains momentum, experts are honing their focus on what comes next for patients with a positive MCED test result. Understanding the diagnostic pathways available after testing are an important aspect of minimizing harm, patient anxiety, and unnecessary interventions.

During a recent discussion, Becker’s Healthcare and Exact Sciences hosted leaders from Johns Hopkins Medicine and Exact Sciences to talk about how imaging plays a critical role in guiding next steps after a positive MCED result by confirming and localizing malignancies.

Here are four key takeaways from the conversation:

1. Positive MCED tests follow imaging-based diagnostic pathways or molecular tumor of origin (TOO) diagnostic pathways.

There are two diagnostic pathways following a positive MCED test result. One is the imaging based diagnostic pathway, and the other is the molecular tumor of origin (TOO)/cancer signal of origin (CSO) diagnostic pathway.

While some MCED tests may provide a predicted TOO/CSO, the molecular prediction may be inconclusive or incorrect. In these cases, patients with a positive MCED test may follow up with a targeted imaging procedure and then need to undergo subsequent whole-body imaging. In contrast, using whole-body imaging for diagnostic confirmation of a positive MCED test can offer an efficient workflow solution.

Most patients will require cross-sectional imaging regardless of whether a TOO signal is conclusive, explained Tomasz Beer, MD, Chief Medical Officer and VP of MCED at Exact Sciences. He cited the landmark DETECT-A study published in Science, noting that in this prospective, interventional study of over 10,000 participants, a CT-based diagnostic pathway localized all 26 detected cancers and provided reliable resolution for false positive MCED test results.

Enabling maximally conclusive diagnoses with optimum efficiency remains a critical component of improving patient care and the overall patient experience.

“Fewer diagnostic procedures is not just more efficient, less expensive, and safer — but it’s faster,” Dr. Beer said. “When things are faster, patients get to their answers more quickly and can rest easy if they’re cancer free, or get a robust answer if they have to face cancer.”

2. Imaging-based pathways are predicted to reduce diagnostic burden for patients with positive MCED tests.

Dr. Xiting Cao, the Director of Health Economics and Outcomes Research at Exact Sciences, shared findings from a recent modeling study published in JNCI Cancer Spectrum that compared the efficiency and impact of imaging-first diagnostic pathways for positive MCED result confirmation to those diagnostic pathways guided by molecular predictions.

In this study, researchers explored all diagnostic procedures that would provide clinical information essential for cancer treatment. Modeling data indicated that patients with false positive MCED test results who follow an imaging-based diagnostic pathway are expected to undergo 2.40 procedures, while patients with false positive MCED test results who follow a molecular TOO/CSO diagnostic pathway are expected to undergo 4.05 procedures. The diagnostic burden was higher for the molecular TOO/CSO strategy across all positive predictive values and localization performances.

These findings also highlight the importance of efficient care coordination to ensure timely clinical evaluation and diagnostic procedures following a positive MCED test result, helping to minimize diagnostic delays.

3. Imaging scalability improves care for patients with positive MCED test results

Elliot Fishman, MD, Professor of Radiology, Oncology and Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine emphasized that computed tomography (CT) is well-positioned to support diagnostic resolution following a positive MCED result due to both its wide availability and improved precision.

“People are not going to be able to travel hundreds of miles or 50 miles even,” Dr. Fishman said, acknowledging the critical nature of accessible imaging. He also noted that advanced techniques like photon-counting CT and AI are improving resolution while reducing radiation exposure. “One of the biggest gains that you’re going to see in the short term and long term is the accuracy of imaging, because AI is being used to improve the accuracy of detection.”

4. The integration of MCED testing and efficient workflows for positive results has the potential to enhance care

To ensure high-value use of imaging, Dr. Beer stressed the importance of patient education and clear care pathways. The Cancerguard™ EX test, Exact Sciences’ MCED test, is designed with a specificity of 98%. If successfully integrated into clinical workflows, MCED testing and prompt imaging could dramatically reshape cancer detection and early intervention over the next five years.

Dr. Cao’s research shows widespread use of annual MCED testing could reduce stage IV cancer incidence by 42% and cancer-specific mortality by 18% within a decade.

 “To really achieve a significant reduction in the burden that cancer places on all of us, we must advance early detection,” remarked Dr. Beer. “This is a very promising way to pursue that.”

Disclaimer: The webinar, “Seeing Beyond the Signal: Imaging After a Positive MCED Test,” and this article were sponsored by Exact Sciences. The content of this article is not medical advice.
The post Advancing multi cancer early detection appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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We’ve come a long way from when electronic health records (EHRs) were first built as billing systems. As we progress as an industry toward better usability, it’s clear that general best practice workflows have not reflected the daily realities of clinical users, especially at the specialty level.

Behavioral health is just one clinical focus area that exemplifies the gap between health IT and provider needs. Let’s explore the current state of behavioral health and how EHRs can evolve to support provider satisfaction and efficiency while promoting patient-centric care.

Behavioral health trends since COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic was a turning point in behavioral health demand. Consider the following trends identified since its onset:

Approximately 23% of adults received mental health treatment within the span of a year.

Among adults with a mental illness, 17% of those with a perceived unmet need for treatment said there were no openings in the treatment program or with the healthcare professional they wanted to go to.

More than one-third of the U.S. population lives in a Mental Health Professional Shortage Area, and these shortages are particularly pronounced in rural areas.

As the volume of patients seeking treatment has risen, more healthcare organizations have begun providing outpatient behavioral health services. Many have grown their group therapy offerings to expand access to these services in their communities—but EHRs largely have not caught up.

Single workflow for multi-patient sessions

One of the biggest sources of inefficiency I’ve heard in conversations with behavioral health providers is group therapy documentation.

In a single session, there might be 10 patients and a multidisciplinary team including a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a social worker. At the end of that session, the providers typically must document a shared group summary for each participant, though many EHRs don’t support this need. Providers are left manually copying and pasting notes across the ten different records. This sort of inefficient process drains time and increases the risk of errors.

Clinicians should be able to document group session details, participant lists, session objectives, activities and outcomes in a single streamlined process that applies the group note to all participants simultaneously. EHRs traditionally have not been able to accommodate bulk group therapy notes, underscoring the need for flexible health IT solutions that align to the ways clinicians prefer to work.

Individualized patient notes

While bulk group therapy notes can save a lot of headaches, providers must also be able to individualize notes for patients in the session. The system should support documentation for each patient’s progress, participation and treatment details.

With the time saved from a group therapy bulk note capability, providers can then spend more time adding customized remarks to each patient’s record to ensure personalized care documentation. Striking a balance between efficiency and individualization is just one example of how EHRs can produce real value when they reflect what users truly need.

By evolving to support the specific workflows of behavioral health delivery, EHRs can support both providers and patients. It’s not just about better documentation. Ultimately, it’s about better experiences and outcomes. At Altera Digital Health, we are bringing rural, critical access and community hospitals the EHR capabilities they need with an available behavioral health module through Paragon® Denali. Learn how the cloud-native, containerized EHR can support your teams here.
The post What behavioral health providers really need from their EHR appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

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