Meet Susan. Susan is a 66-year-old woman who lives alone. She is referred to a clinic following a 2-week stay in the hospital. When asked by clinic staff why she was admitted, Susan says, “I had a bad cold.” Her hospital records, however, show an admission for pneumonia complicated by congestive heart failure and diabetes. […]
Remote work seems here to stay, and controversy along with it. Disney, Google, Amazon, Starbucks, and Tesla are among the high-profile companies calling workers back to the office for at least a few days a week, sometimes provoking strong opposition. Amazon workers, for example, staged a walkout to protest the company’s return-to-office (RTO) policy, and […]
It’s been four years since the pandemic upended our assumptions about how work should be done. In 2021, the Great Resignation brought us record-breaking quits and record-breaking new job openings. Then, 2022 ushered in the Remote-Work Wars, when leaders who’d viewed working from home as a temporary response to a public health crisis were surprised […]
With first-wave baby boomers now in their 70s and roughly 10,000 Americans turning 65 each day, Medicare Advantage plans are the fastest-growing segment of the health insurance market. In 2023, 30.8 million people are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, accounting for just over half, or 51%, of the eligible Medicare population. While this sounds […]
In this increasingly digital world, sometimes the only thing that will satisfy our customer service needs and make us feel we’ve been understood is live interaction with a fellow human being. Yet many companies remain challenged by staffing shortages as today’s expectations of operational efficiency and consumer experience test the endurance of agents facing back-to-back […]
The pendulum swings fast when it comes to the so-called future of work. In the nearly three years since the pandemic pushed remote work into the mainstream, the work from home vs. on-site debate has raged in almost every industry sector. As early as 2021, 14% of Fortune 100 companies issued return-to-office mandates, but with […]
You might say we saw it coming. In 2009, when our then fledgling business processing outsourcing company transitioned to a fully remote workplace, one of our biggest concerns was that the isolation and loneliness of working from home could derail our momentum. We knew intuitively and from our research that the need to connect socially […]
The practice known as prior authorization has become the poster child for good intentions gone awry in healthcare. Conceived to prevent unnecessary or low-value medical services by requiring an insurer’s approval prior to ordering certain procedures, tests, or treatments, the process has come under fire by provider organizations for creating barriers to necessary care. In […]
We’ve seen the writing on the wall—and on clinicians’ computers—for some time now. As far back as 2016, a  study of U.S. physicians found that for every hour of direct face time with patients nearly two additional hours were spent on electronic health record (EHR) tasks and desk work, often spilling over to time at […]
Credentialing Crunch as PHE Expires The announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) will end on May 11th signals a return to normal for providers and payers required to verify the professional records that qualify a clinician to practice medicine. This formal process, known as […]
