Health Connect South Archives - Page 4 of 5

Greenway Health

June 16, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Greenway Health

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Greenway Health

A couple of topics that have come up repeatedly over the course of weeks since we started the Health Connect South Radio show: Population Health and Interoperability. On this week’s show we sat down with health IT expert, Mark Janiszewski, EVP of Product Management for Greenway Health.

Mark shared how the company has recently introduced new solutions that are aimed at facilitating better population health management initiatives. Recent changes in the law are placing greater requirements for focus on preventive health and patient outcomes over the older disease-focused models that reimbursed on a fee-for-service basis.

Greenway’s platform gives providers access to data that empowers them to close gaps in care delivery and better manage a population’s high-cost problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses. Additionally, the company is providing a portal called, Greenway Exchange, that gives patients ability to see their health data, schedule appointments, and even interact with their care providers.

We talked about how the company helps their clients prepare for the coming implementation of ICD-10 coding requirements that are currently set to go into effect in October 2015. The new coding format will add a much greater degree of detail in documenting patient problems and treatments.

The goal of the ICD-10 changes is to facilitate research, improve outcomes through better case management, decrease medical errors, enhance public health, educate patients on costs/outcomes, and more.

Mark shared some of the challenges that health organizations face in meeting the expectations for the ICD-10 documentation. The company is helping to prepare their clients for the upcoming changes in coding.

“Greenway Health has always worked to empower our customers so they can deliver high-quality care while being financially sound,” said Tee Green, CEO of Greenway Health. “Never has that been more important given the rise of pay-for-performance, healthcare consumerism and a population with an increasing number of chronic conditions that requires coordination between multiple caregivers. Greenway Community enables providers to gain actionable insight into clinical and financial performance at all levels of the care continuum like never before.”

Greenway Health has been providing health IT solutions since 1977. Over time, the company has grown significantly, both organically and through merger. As an enterprise, the company delivers clinical, financial, and administrative information tools providers need to practice medicine the way they want to practice.

Greenway helps providers stay ahead of the complex regulatory requirements, maximize revenue and, most importantly, focus on their patients rather than on technology. The company accomplishes this through intuitive user interfaces, interoperability leadership to exchange clinical data and facilitate connected care, and a grass-roots service culture.

Special Guest:

Mark Janiszewski, EVP, Product Management, Greenway Health

Bachelor of Commerce, Concordia
UniversityGraduate Diploma, Public Accountancy, McGill University
Previous Director, Account Marketing, Nortel Networks
Former VP, Product Management, Revenue Cycle Solutions

Rimidi

June 11, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Rimidi

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Rimidi

This week we hosted the President and CEO of Rimidi, Dr. Luci Ide. Rimidi is a healthcare technology company that is working to help patients and health providers better manage diabetes. It’s an important endeavor—roughly 24 million Americans are diabetic and as many as 86 million more are pre-diabetic (slightly elevated fasting glucose levels).

Based on current trends, 1 in 3 persons will have diabetes by 2050. And when you consider the costs associated with treating diabetes and the problems such as heart disease, stroke, and others that often come with it, as much as $.60 of every healthcare dollar are spent on this population.

The Rimidi platform is an application that allows patients to share sensor data from glucometers, fitness devices, and share nutritional data from apps such as My Fitness Pal with their providers via a portal link on the provider’s EMR.

The benefit of gathering real time health data and sharing it with the provider is that corrective measures can be taken sooner should trends show that glucose levels are not responding to the care plan as expected. In this way the patient can more consistently maintain or improve their glucose levels and avoid damaging effects of high glucose such as neuropathy, renal failure, vascular disease, and others.

The company’s platform has been live for roughly a year and they are now actively looking for healthcare partners to deploy their Diabetes+Me application.

We also had a chance to speak with a patient ambassador, Joelle, for “Lights, Camera, Take Action On MS” by Genzyme. This public awareness event/campaign is working to increase awareness about multiple sclerosis. The event is coming to The Atlanta Marriott, Alpharetta, June 27, 2015, 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM ET.

At the event, guests will have the chance to engage with experts and hear tips on how to manage their MS. Beverly Layton, Registered Nurse, will be at each event to discuss the emotional impact of MS and techniques to help people alleviate feelings of guilt or depression. Alongside Beverly will be Certified Life Coach Caroline Craven, who lives with MS and is skilled in managing the stress that comes with the disease. Medical Exercise Specialist Monique Acton will also be at each event to share tips on how people living with MS can stay active and maintain energy.

Special Guest:

Luci Ide, MD, President and CEO of Rimidi

MD/PhD Emory University
Residency, Obstetrics-Gynecology, Magee-Womens Hospital
2014 Recipient, Ross Baird Award for Excellent, Village Capital
Former Associate, Monarch Capital Partners

Elder Care

June 6, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Elder Care

00:00 / 01:00:43

Elder Care

This week we hosted experts whose companies address the care needs of our elderly population. We hosted Maria de la Guardia, of Assisted Living Locators, Chris Foster, of LivHome, and Blaine Warketine, of Vimty.

Assisted Living Locators is a company that provides a free service for families in search of an assisted living facility for their loved one. The company forms relationships with facilities around the community, getting to know them, the services they provide, costs, etc. They then get to know the families who connect with them seeking help through an interview process to be better able to recommend a facility based on location, type of services available, living environment, cost, etc.

We talked about the fact that many online services focus mainly on a few facilities with which they have financial arrangements, leaving out many options in the area that could potentially be a better fit for a given patient. Once they have contact information for the family it is shared with other services who then assail the family with calls and emails trying to sell them on centers they represent. Maria shared some questions families should ask when they contact an online service that purports to be the facility they think they’re contacting.

LivHome is a company that helps seniors be able to live their lives in their own home or their family’s home with the care support and equipment needed to do so. The company conducts an in-depth assessment of the needs of the patient(s) in need of supportive care/equipment through interviews with their nursing staff. From there, they can make recommendations and provide the supportive care providers necessary.

Chris shared his story about having been disappointed in the experience with home care for loved ones in the past and that he wanted to provide a high-quality service for the patients who want to be able to live in their own home. We talked about the fact that it’s actually possible to have an elderly patient live in their own or a family member’s home for less than or similar costs to an assisted living center or nursing facility.

Blaine Warketine shared some impressive statistics about how much of overall healthcare spend each year comes from providing high-acuity care in the last days of life, often for patients who didn’t actually want to have aggressive measures. Vimty is a platform that allows patients to conduct video interviews with counselors and family members wherein they are able to state their wishes for end of life care measures, along with context for why they feel the way they do.

We talked about the fact that this record has much more weight and is much more likely to prevent much of the family drama that can occur with the typical written advanced directive document (or worse, in the cases of NO document). Through the Vimty platform, patients have a permanent record that is part of their EMR that can be referenced when end-of-life measures become necessary.

Special Guests:

Maria de la Guardia, of Assisted Living Locators

MBA International Business, George Washington University
Professional Development in Gerontology, Kennesaw State University
Previous Strategy & Policy Development/Industry Analyst
Board of Directors, Strength of Nature

Chris Foster, of LivHome

Certified Senior Advisor, Society of Certified Senior Advisors
Former Member, Board of Directors, March of Dimes of Georgia
President/CEO, SportsCom, Inc.

Blaine Warketine, of Vimty

Doctor of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin
Residency, Orthopedics, University of Maryland School of Medicine
Fellowship, Orthopedic Knee Conditions, Long Beach Memorial Medical Center
MBA, Entrepreneurship, University of Utah David Eccles School of Business

Hospital Acquired Conditions

May 22, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Hospital Acquired Conditions

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Hospital Acquired Conditions

According to CDC, there were over 700,000 hospital acquired conditions in 2011 (in this case, infections). When you add those numbers to other preventable situations such as falls, wrong drug/dose/patient, and others, it’s clear that hospitals can be potentially-dangerous places. This week, Diana and I sat down with two experts from companies that are tackling this problem from different directions.

HanGenix, an Atlanta-based start-up is developing an innovative technology that employs ultrasound transmitters/receivers on soap dispensers, on the clinicians’ badges, and in the patients’ rooms with the goal of increasing compliance with hand-washing standards. CEO, Jeff Kline, talked about how each patient bed is “guarded” by an ultrasonic receiver that communicates with the clinician’s badge and soap dispenser in the room or nearby.

The system starts a clock that will alert the health worker that they need to re-wash their hands if too much time elapses between washing their hands and touching the patient. The bed’s zone receiver also prompts an audible alert on the worker’s badge if they approach the patient’s bed without having registered a hand-washing event detected by the system.

Early returns from health systems that are participating in the testing of the prototype have shown that hand washing compliance is as low as 40% before implementing the technology and rises rapidly once it is deployed. This is significant, as hand-washing has been identified as one of the most effective means to prevent spread of infections from patient-to-patient in a healthcare environment.

Synensis’s Chief Innovation Officer, Rick Stone, joined the conversation to talk about how their company works with their healthcare clients to assess the organization’s internal culture relating to behaviors that reduce hospital acquired conditions such as falls, infections, and other sentinel events. Through an in-depth assessment at the outset of their engagement, Synensis’s team formulates a picture of how an organization prioritizes policies/procedures that can reduce/prevent those sentinel events.

The company then begins to interface with all levels of leadership and front-line providers to raise awareness and put in place actions such as debriefings after untoward events occur so that better team work can result. Synensis also helps hospitals identify areas of their organization that have particularly low rates of sentinel events to draw from their localized culture/approach to prevention to the betterment of the organization as a whole. As Rick stated, “Hospitals have teams of experts. But, few have expert teams,” pointing out that in many industries, healthcare included, poor communication and/or teamwork is the primary culprit in accidents.

Special Guests:

Jeff Kline, CEO/Co-founder, HanGenix

MBA, Goizueta Business School, Emory University
Previous Manager, Deloitte Consulting
Former Director of Marketing, BARD Urology Division
Previous VP Marketing, Genesis Biosciences

Rick Stone, Chief Innovation Officer, Synensis

MS Clinical Psychology, Vanderbilt University
Former President, StoryWork Institute
Previous StoryAnalytics Master, IDEAS
Fluent in Spanish

This program made possible by:

SkyTherapist

May 14, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

SkyTherapist

00:00 / 01:00:39

SkyTherapist

This week we sat down with the co-founders of SkyTherapist. Sky Therapist, Inc is a virtual platform for mental health support addressing the major complaints of patients in their course of treatment. They offer integrative solutions for intelligent patient-therapist matching, quick initial assessment, and continuity of care.

CEO, Afshan Ali, and CFO, Keith Jones, shared their story about how they decided there must be a better way to provide patients in need with access to a mental health professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Keith talked about how as a teenager, he was present when his father died, causing him to experience great anxiety and emotional pain. He was hospitalized for a few weeks but felt he did not receive very effective mental health care while he was there.

Afshan discussed how she developed an interest in neurology and mental health during her years in medical school before changing career paths. The two of them looked at the landscape of how mental health is delivered and felt there was an opportunity to create a new platform that could help people in need find the therapist best suited for them.

As they got to work on building their virtual platform that incorporates telemedicine technology, they felt that a key element that would set them apart was going to be a matching algorithm, paired with carefully-chosen intake questions for the patient-to-be. The purpose of this design is intended to make the process of linking up with a professional that is experientially suited and a fit personality-wise.

We talked about the fact that for persons in crisis, the process of trying to find that personal fit that allows them to be able to be open and get the most of their therapy can be overwhelming. Having to go through talking about what the reason is for seeking help over and over to professional after professional, trying to find a fit can often cause patients in need to give up on finding help.

SkyTherapist is able to quickly provide several professionals for the patient to talk to who are much more likely to be a good fit for the patient. The platform also provides for some communication through correspondence with their provider between sessions. It also has a component that allows provider and patient to agree upon self-care activities such as exercise or others and actually track their compliance.

The company will be focusing much of its early launch (July 2015) on providing services to businesses with Employee Assistance Programs. This will give them ability to scale more quickly while providing their client companies with much more effective and cost-efficient care to employees who need access to a mental health pro.

When you have the chance to hear how/why these experts built this healthcare platform it’s clear they are dedicated to insuring patients in need of professional mental health care, SkyTherapist is clearly providing a promising solution.

Special Guests:

Afshan Ali, CEO/Co-founder of SkyTherapist

BBA, Management Information Services, Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business
Former Senior Consultant, Deloitt Consulting
Active Healthcare Consultant
Speaks English, Hindi, Urdu

Keith Jones, CFO/Co-founder of SkyTherapist

Managing Partner, HarCap Commercial Funding
Former Owner, Eclipse Investment Group
Multiple Successful Entrepreneurial Ventures

This show brought to you by:

Exercise is Medicine

May 7, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Exercise is Medicine

00:00 / 01:00:37

Exercise is Medicine

This week we focused on the value of physical activity to our overall state of wellness. We were joined in studio by Dr. Felipe Lobelo of Emory University, Mike Tinney, of Fitness Interactive Experience, and JP Matzegheit, of Wahoo Fitness. We talked about the physiologic importance of physical activity along with innovative technologies that facilitate inspiring people to get moving.

Physical inactivity now ranks as the 2^nd leading cause of mortality in the world. However, too few health systems and health care providers include physical activity (PA) as part of the prevention and management of obesity and chronic diseases. For 5 years, the Exercise is Medicine (EIM) initiative of the American College of Sports Medicine has helped build local networks to support the systematic inclusion of PA in health care in the US and more than 40 countries in 5 continents via the “EIM Solution”, an evidence-based approach to assessing patients, prescribing appropriate PA and developing community-based PA resources linked to health services and public awareness. The

Large-scale implementation of the EIM Solution across different populations, settings and health care systems is a complex process. The EIM-GRCC serves as a coordinating center for EIM implementation projects by offering state-of –art consultation research and evaluation support, training, policy, cross-national networking and management dimensions of EIM programming to support the initiative.

Fitness Interactive Experience (FIX) has developed a tech platform that incorporates a video game-inspired approach to motivating people to walk and engage in brief periods of other physical activities. FIX provides their application to businesses seeking to improve the health of their employees for use over 6-8 weeks as a fitness challenge. The application uses the popular zombie theme to get the user to walk more each day.

The application interfaces with wearable fitness devices such as FitBit to track physical activity such as walking/running. In order for their character to survive in the game they’ll have to walk while wearing their fitness device to “walk/run” their character to safe zones. The early data from their initial challenges has shown promising statistics regarding the level of participation and engagement by employees using the application.

Wahoo Fitness produces a range of wearable fitness devices designed to give feedback on a variety of physical activities and bio data. The sensors enable athletes to become more efficient runners, swimmers, and riders through the use of accelerometers in the sensors. Additionally, users can train smarter by monitoring heart rate instead of subjective rating of perceived exertion (RPE).

Users are able to compare current training session against previous sessions to evaluate number of reps, cadence, and other training data.

Special Guests:

Dr. Felipe Lobelo, MD, PhD, Emory University, Global Health Department, Exercise is Medicine

Associate Professor, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Previous Lead Epidemiologist, CDC
Doctor of Medicine, Universidad del Rosario
PhD Exercise Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia

Mike Tinney, CEO/Founder, Fitness Interactive Experience/ A Step Ahead Challenge

Previous CEO, White Wolf
Former President, CCP America
Nearly 20 years of experience in the video gaming industry from developer to leadership roles

JP Matzigkeit, CEO/Founder of Wahoo Fitness

MBA, University of North Carolina, Kenan Flagler Business School
Previous Advisory Board Chair, Founder and President, Chastain Park Conservancy
Former AVP Compensation, Cox Enterprises
Avid cyclist

Eating Disorders

April 15, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Eating Disorders

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Eating Disorders

This week we focused on eating disorders. I sat down with experts from Eating Disorders Information Network, a non-profit organization aimed at outreach to increase awareness/prevention among students in grade school to high school, and helping people identify resources for treatment. According to the National Anorexia Nervosa Association, eating disorders are a serious problem, with as many as 24 million Americans suffering with some form of disorder from anorexia, to bulemia, to binge/purge, and more.

The problem affects both men and women, children and adults, across all demographics. And according to Dr. Dina Zeckhausen, founder of EDIN, eating disorders are more deadly than other mental illness. When you consider dysfunctional eating habits such as overly-restrictive dieting, comfort eating, and others, as many as 80-90% of us are impacted at some time by potentially-problematic attitudes about food.

EDIN is working to engage young people beginning in grade school through high school to promote self-acceptance and to share information about the dangers of risky behaviors such as “clubs” that foster unhealthy choices such as eating crackers and water only for lunch with a group of peers. Their website describes their mission in this way, “The Eating Disorders Information Network (EDIN) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention of eating disorders through education, outreach, and action. EDIN is committed to addressing the problem of eating disorders on a societal level. We are devoted to:

Preventing eating disorders
Increasing public awareness of the personal, familial, and cultural/media influences which contribute to eating disorders
Helping those already suffering to find the therapeutic services they need

The organization strives to serve as a comprehensive resource and educational guide for those wanting to learn more about eating disorders, those seeking help, and those gathering and distributing information about available treatment options both in the Atlanta area and nationwide.”

Special Guests:

Dina Zeckhausen, PhD, Founder of Eating Disorders Information Network

PhD, Clinical-Community Psychology, University of South Carolina
Active private practice psychologist
Well-known public speaker on the topic of eating disorders
Published author and playwrite

Hallie Udelson, Eating Disorders Information Network

BA, Psychology, Emory University
2016 Candidate, Master of Public Health, Emory University
Developing curriculum for school outreach initiatives for EDIN

Sara Pannell, Incoming Director, Eating Disorders Information Network

Licensed Family and Marriage Counselor, Trillium Springs Counseling
MS, Family & Marriage Counseling, Fuller Theological Seminary
Previous Bi-lingual Clinician I, San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center

Intellimedix and Life University

April 1, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Intellimedix and Life University

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Intellimedix and Life University

This week we sat down with experts from Intellimedix and Life University. Intellimedix is an Atlanta-based company that uses high-powered computing algorithms, coupled with genetic testing to identify existing medications that could potentially be re-purposed to effectively treat illnesses other than the ones they were originally designed to treat. One of the company’s founders has a child who suffers from a severe form of epilepsy. Unfortunately, there are limited treatments known to be available that will provide relief from this debilitating condition. His daughter’s story influenced the decision to focus the company’s initial efforts on uncovering existing medications that could be successfully re-purposed to help folks dealing with this type of epilepsy and other neurologic disorders.

Chief Science Officer, Jeff Skolnick shared the example of how a blood pressure medication (Viagra) was re-purposed to treat erectile dysfunction. He went on the discuss the physiology/chemistry behind why this is possible and why it makes sense to look for existing, approved medications that have the ability to improve quality of life for patients dealing with illnesses different from those the medications are initially intended to treat. This approach saves a great deal of time and money over the years-long, massively-expensive process of developing a medication from ground zero to treat a particular condition; allowing patients in need to receive access to an effective treatment sooner.

Dr. Gilles LeMarche, VP of Professional Relations at Life University came by to talk about the undergraduate and graduate programs available at their Marietta, GA-based campus. They offer a number of health, wellness, and sports-related degrees ranging from chiropractic medicine, to vitalistic nutrition, functional kinesiology, and others. He shared their approach to wellness, applying the philosphy of “vitalism” allows their graduates to help their clients/patients by helping the body to heal itself; as it is ideally capable of doing when interfering factors are removed.

Special Guests:

Steven Hickson, CFO, Intellimedix

MBA, Global Executive MBA Program, IESE Business School, Barcelona Spain
BA Accounting, NC State University
Previous Senior Auditor, Turner Broadcasting System
Former SVP, New Media & Premium Channels, Fox International Channels- Asia

Jeff Skolnick, PhD, Chief Science Officer, Intellimedix

Director, Center for Study of Systems Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology
PhD, Chemistry, Yale University
Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair in Computational Systems Biology
Associate Director, Integrated Biosystems Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology

Gilles Lamarche, DCM, VP, Professional Relations, Life University

Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine, Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College
Certified Six Advisors Coach, 6 Advisors Coaching Academy
Former Vice President, Parker College of Chiropractic
Fluent in French

Some backing music provided by: www.pacdv.com/sounds/

Liv2BGirl

March 18, 2015 by angishields

Health Connect South

Liv2BGirl

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Liv2BGirl

We’ve all heard the news stories about young people who have been victims of cyberbullying through social media. In some cases, kids have even gone so far as attempting or committing suicide over the experience. This week we sat down with Cindy Abel and Tosha Marks, co-founders of Liv2BGirl. It’s a social media environment they’re building as a mobile app that will give girls a social media environment exclusive to them. The site will be free from cyberbullying and negative, attacking/abusive behaviors—these being clearly prohibited when a user sets up their profile.

A recent article by Cindy and Tosha published on Momeomagazine.com states these statistics cited from dosomething.org:

Nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online
68% of teens agree that cyberbullying is a serious problem
81% of young people think bullying online is easier to get away with than bullying in person
90% of teens who have seen cyberbullying ignored it
Girls are twice as likely as boys to be victims of cyberbullying
Only 1 in 10 victims tell there parent or trusted adult of the abuse.

In this short clip, Tosha Marks shares why they are building the Liv2BGirl app:

The concept proved to have traction with girls when they launched their beta website to evaluate interest and content offerings, gaining roughly 700 users who tested the site. Cindy and Tosha quickly found that the idea of a social media space free from hurtful, hateful behaviors is appealing to girls—enough so that average time per visit was ~30 mins.

We talked about some of the troubling statistics around cyberbullying as well as negative experiences Cindy and Tosha saw their own daughters face in various social media platforms. We also discussed the resources they need to bring their app to full realization and how folks can get involved to get this source of positive peer pressure and encouragement for our daughters into their hands.

Special Guests:

Tosha Marks, Co-founder, Liv2BGirl