Axial in the News | Blog

More and more patients are using smartphone-based tools to manage their health.  The smartphone is an excellent tool for tracking and managing personal health and sharing that information with their doctor.  With an estimated 30 percent of 7.4 billion mobile phone subscribers in 2015 likely to use a phone-based wellness application (BCG/Telenor Mobile Health Report), billions of people are going to be storing personal health information on their phone.  It is essential that individuals follow basic mobile security best practices in order for this technology to live up to its full potential in a safe and secure manner.

Read More | Comment

Last month, Axial debuted its Patient Engagement Index (PEI) with a ranking of Florida hospitals. Last week, we followed up with the Texas ranking. The reception has been incredible. People are evidently very much ready to join the conversation about transforming healthcare through patient engagement. Through the PEI, we've seen some incredible work happening at a select number of health systems. The investments that these health systems are making in patient engagement leads us to be optimistic about the future of healthcare. Here is some of the coverage from our first two installments of the Patient Engagement Index:

Read More | Comment

The old joke about ACOs was that they were like unicorns. Everyone liked to talk about them, but no one had actually seen one. That appears to be changing. I have seen them and can attest that they are real. According to HHS, there are 156 ACOs participating the Medicare Shared Savings program as of July 2012. There have also been reports that the private sector ACOs are growing faster than the Medicare ACOs. 

The next step is to make them work. That is, improve patient outcomes while generating profits for the ACO provider members. The key to ACO profits? Margin management. The enemy of margins? Case Managers.

Read More | Comment

Let’s face it: despite all kinds of incentives, financial and otherwise, statistics overwhelming indicate that the problem of readmissions isn’t improving. What other industries have a 20% return rate? While there are certainly issues that will and should land people back in the hospital, there are also many patients who shouldn’t go back.
 

Read More | Comment

In the Community-Based Care Transitions Program, community-based agencies provide coaching and education to patients as they make the transition from hospital to home. Complementing this "high-touch" approach are a number of technology solutions developed by firms such as North Carolina–based Axial Exchange, Illinois-based Care Team Connect, and California–based Engineered Care that educate patients, track their progress after discharge, and identify gaps in care.

Axial Exchange recently won a Health 2.0 developer challenge that required engineers to build a system that would improve care transitions by easing the transmission of medical data among care settings and educating patients on ways to manage their conditions.

Read More | Comment