Client News Coverage

While two new drugs – lecanemab and donanemab – have recently been approved for the treatment of the condition in the US and the UK, there is a desperate need for innovative new therapies.

One such innovative approach is the use of Transcranial Electromagnetic Treatment (TEMT), which works by modulating brain activity through electromagnetic pulses. It is thought that the pulses are able to impact plaque buildup in the brain that is associated with the development of Alzheimer’s.

Neuro Rehab Times»

While mass outages like 2024’s CrowdStrike event can bring small businesses and major corporations alike to their knees, small technical issues or IT events are far more common and can shut down business functions with equally devastating effects. Cybersecurity threats raise the stakes even more, especially for small- and mid-sized businesses that rarely have strong protections in place to stave off potentially business-ending attacks.

“Surging security and cybersecurity threats don’t discriminate by company size, industry, or geographic footprint. In today’s high-risk security environment, an attack is all but inevitable,” says Erik Eisen, CEO of CTI Technical Services, a leading provider of IT support and cybersecurity services. “Which is why every business today needs to make—and keep—a resolution to start the year with an evaluation of their network and security status to identify and address areas of weakness so they’re around next year.”

The New Year means new updates to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set—substantial changes that reflect the rapid advancement of medical technology, procedures, and care delivery models and reshape the medical coding landscape. The CPT 2025 updates, which took effect on January 1, 2025, introduced 270 new codes, 112 deletions, and 38 revisions that offer healthcare providers the tools to document and bill for a broader range of services accurately.

These latest updates from the American Medical Association (AMA), which seek to streamline reporting processes while ensuring coding accuracy for reimbursement, have broad implications for coding teams and their healthcare organizations. Physicians and other key clinical staff must also understand the changes and whether they require updates to clinical documentation to ensure coders can accurately code to the highest level of specificity. This, in turn, ensures that facilities, physicians, and organizations have appropriate data to support high-quality patient care and timely and proper reimbursement.

As cyber threats evolve, a new wave of malware is gaining traction in the criminal underground: infostealers. These potent data-harvesting tools are becoming a go-to choice for threat actors because of their ability to quickly and effectively siphon information – everything from banking credentials to email passwords – to sell on the dark web, fueling identity theft, financial fraud, and even corporate espionage.

The use of infostealers has skyrocketed in recent ransomware campaigns, often serving as a reconnaissance tool. Attackers use infostealers to gather login credentials, allowing them to move laterally across networks, escalate privileges, and tailor their attacks to inflict maximum damage before deploying a ransomware payload.

In the six years since Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services called for an end to faxing in healthcare, the industry remains stubbornly attached to fax communications. Fax-led communications solutions are prevalent today, as organizations continue exchanging more than 9 billion fax pages each year, representing about $125 billion in annual costs to the healthcare system.

It is a problematic practice in terms of data integrity, productivity, and efficiency. According to information compiled by DirectTrust, 30% of tests must be re-ordered due to lost faxes and 25% of faxes fail to arrive before a patient’s first visit. Faxes also often require manual indexing for integration into the EHR and other health information systems, a time-consuming process that requires human and financial resources that are hard to come by for many healthcare organizations.

HIStalk»

A single breach impacting any of the multiple cloud-based or internally connected tools, devices, and hardware and software solutions found in the typical dental practice or dental services organization (DSO) can put a stop to thousands of dollars of billings per day.

Add to that the cost of recovery and potential fines related to compliance issues if any of those devices or solutions touches patient information, and the outcome can be financially devastating.

For some, it is insurmountable.

As evidenced by the ongoing and massive fall out from 2024’s Change Healthcare ransomware attack, small healthcare organizations are just as vulnerable to cyberattacks and IT events as their large counterparts—but their more limited resources translate into outsized risk profiles.

Surging cybersecurity threats don’t discriminate by a healthcare organization’s size, sector, or geographic footprint. In today’s high-risk security environment, an attack in one form or another is all but inevitable—along with the associated compliance issues and financial penalties.  Which is why even small healthcare organizations should undertake a self-audit to identify and address security and cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

With no effective prevention or long-term treatment, receiving a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease can seem like a fate worse than death for patients and their families and caregivers. However, a wave of innovation is bringing new hope to the 7 million Americans already living with Alzheimer’s disease and the 500,000 who will receive this devastating diagnosis each year.

The urgency to bring new treatment options to market is escalating in tandem with the disease’s prevalence as the nation’s 65-plus population—the group most at risk for Alzheimer’s—grows.

When it comes to providing comprehensive preventive care, more than annual checkups are required. A patient-facing approach is needed to support the establishment of a health-forward routine comprised of proper nutrition and exercise, mental and emotional health, and chronic condition management.

Numerous studies back this preventive care model, which produces wide-ranging benefits, from improved health outcomes to lower care utilization to lower healthcare costs.

It's already been a busy and contentious couple weeks in Washington, with battles across a wide array of government and policy fronts in the early going of the second Trump Administration. Soon, we'll be learning a lot more about how healthcare and health IT policy will be taking shape going forward.

Robert F. Kennedy, Trump's pick to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has not been confirmed yet, but he inched one step closer with a party-line Finance Committee vote on Feb. 4.

As we head into 2025, several key trends are expected to significantly shape the future of healthcare revenue cycle management (RCM). From managing surging denial rates and evolving workforce dynamics to mitigating rising cybersecurity risks and integrating cutting-edge technologies, healthcare organizations are entering the new year while navigating a complex—often contentious—environment to enhance patient care and operational efficiency.

Integrating emerging technologies can make a huge difference in your organization. New technology can ease the clinical burden on your staff, which can be the difference between your staff facing burnout or not. Access to providers and healthcare can be increased with technology which can be the deciding factor for a patient to choose your organization over others. Emerging technologies can even detect anomalies or mistakes which can help a patient get the care they need faster or give you more accurate data.

Today, we are going to focus on emerging technologies in regard to health information management. We reached out to our talented Healthcare IT Today Community and asked them — how can health information management professionals leverage emerging technologies, such as AI, to enhance data integrity and streamline processes? The following is what they had to share.

As cyber threats evolve, infostealers—data-harvesting malware—are gaining traction in the criminal underground. These tools are used to siphon sensitive information like banking credentials and email passwords, which are then sold on the dark web, driving identity theft and financial fraud.

Infostealers are increasingly central to ransomware campaigns, acting as reconnaissance tools to gather login credentials, enabling attackers to move laterally across networks and escalate privileges before deploying ransomware. The rise of malware-as-a-service (MaaS) has made these tools widely accessible, even to those with little technical expertise, putting organizations of all sizes at risk.

Depending on its size, a dental practice or dental service organization (DSO) could have millions of dollars invested into tools, devices, hardware, and software that are connected to each other, the cloud, or other systems. When one is breached, it can put a halt to thousands of dollars of billings per day, not to mention the cost of recovering from a breach. Compliance issues also come into play for any of those devices or software solutions that gather, store, or exchange patient information.

This year our annual predictions will include some topics that look at how AI could help solve the challenges in our healthcare system. We begin with AI in Revenue Cycle Management. When we look at RCM we can identify these areas; patient check-in, insurance verification and pre-authorization, billing and coding, claims, patient payment and collections, to insurance denials.

We asked our experts what we might see in AI innovations for RCM in 2025. Here is what they had to say. And check out all our prediction posts looking to 2025.

Health IT Answers»