Beth Kutscher

Healthcare providers are quickly and enthusiastically embracing Lean process improvement principles to cut costs, become more efficient and enhance quality. But there's room for improvement even in the process of improving.

Last week, employees and patients of the Lana'i Community Health Center blessed a new 6,800-square-foot facility.

Demands for constant upgrades to already-installed electronic health record systems are slowing investment in other important digital technologies like telehealth, remote patient monitoring and online billing.

Plano, Texas-based Vivify Health's software platform allows clinicians to monitor and check in with patients at home. The highest-risk patients are provided with a tablet, while others access the tools through their own devices.

As Lucile Packard Children's Hospital celebrates its 25th anniversary Friday, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based medical center is looking to a future where it focuses on primary care as much as specialty conditions.

The transition to a value-based reimbursement system has put pressure on all sectors of the healthcare industry to justify the prices they charge.

Health systems and hospitals that are taking financial risk for keeping people healthy aren't the only ones that want access to patient-generated data. Drug and biotech firms know patient-reported information can help get their products to market faster and assess how they perform in the real world.

Clinical trial recruitment has long been one of the most challenging areas of drug development, and finding patients for these trials has become only more complex as the medical field gains a greater understanding of cancer pathways and genomics.

More than a third of California's residents now have Medicaid, and as the state looks to expand its Medicaid program even further, the rising number of patients in the program is having a complicated effect on hospital finances.

California is moving to become the first state to allow unauthorized immigrants to purchase insurance through the state exchange. The state Assembly has voted to open up Covered California to immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who want to purchase a health plan with their own funds.

Evolent's technology and consulting platform can help identify high-risk patients by analyzing data from multiple sources and then create physician-driven care-management plans.