The healthcare industry is bracing for a potential bombshell in late June. The individual mandate, a key portion of the 2009 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), may be overturned by the Supreme Court. While the mandate is just one provision in the extremely expansive healthcare law, a lot hinges on its constitutionality.
There are several ways the decision could affect PPACA—and subsequently, the healthcare industry. One possibility is that the current law would be amended—if the individual mandate is declared unconstitutional, it could be written out along with several very closely related items, including a requirement that insurers provide coverage regardless of a patient’s pre-existing conditions. Then again, the entire act could be dissolved with an unfavorable decision. And of course, there’s the strong possibility that the individual mandate will be upheld by the Supreme Court justices, and the various provisions of the law will move forward as planned. (more…)
Facebook has more than 500 million active users. Twitter recently announced that it had topped 200 million accounts. According to ComScore, 1 out of every 8 minutes of the average online user’s internet time is spent on Facebook and 22% of Fortune 500 companies now have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months. These statistics, as well events in Egypt and Tunisia during the past few months, validate something that many people have known for quite some time—social media is powerful.
Sure, political upheaval does not directly correspond with the healthcare universe, but the same principles apply. Social media offers bi-lateral participation, gives voice to anyone with an internet connection, and effectively removes the “smoke and mirror effect” that big marketing budgets can create—and that can be scary for healthcare customers. Maybe that’s why so many organizations continue to resist a corporate Facebook account or allowing executives to tweet on the firm’s behalf.
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I attended the American Health Information Management Association’s (AHIMA) annual convention last week. Not surprisingly, in line with the transformative changes affecting the healthcare industry-at-large, health information management (HIM) professionals are also coping with some adjustments.
HIM professionals used to be the “keepers of the record.” In days past, this was a much needed full-time occupation—with masses of paper files, privacy concerns and storage issues. Today, information management is still a dire component of any healthcare organization, but an obvious blurring of the lines between HIM and informatics is taking place. (more…)
If you’re in any way involved with marketing, you realize there’s something wrong with that question. It’s the word
“waiting.” Marketing is defined as a strategy by which companies live and breathe – it demands outreach, communication and forward motion. If you have been sitting at your desk with a stack of outdated brochures and nowhere to go, you have a problem.
Marketing paralysis has snuggled in comfortably as companies have delayed marketing expenditures. Understandably, the economy has thrown companies some hard knocks. In more than a few cases, marketing budgets have stepped up to the chopping block.
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