Managed Healthcare Week in Review February 29, 2020

Concerns over coronavirus and curiosity over Medicare for All drove online readership at Managed Healthcare Executive this week. Here are the most popular new online articles for the week ending February 29, 2020:

CT Scans of Lung May Help With Coronavirus Diagnosis

Physicians at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City say they have identified patterns in the lungs that can help diagnose COVID-19. The results were reported in the February issue of Radiology. According to a press release, the study examined CT scans of 94 patients that Mount Sinai investigators received from China; the patients had been admitted to four medical centers in China after traveling to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.

Alexa Can You Transform Healthcare?

Amazon’s inroads into healthcare will include the milestone of Alexa becoming compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in April. At that point,  developers of Amazon Alexa will meet requirements that govern how sensitive health information is transmitted and received if they follow the HIPAA guidelines. No other r smart speaker and digital assistant vendors can make this claim. The step come after Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles ran a pilot with the Amazon Echoes in more than 100 patient rooms. The idea is to allow patients to communicate with caregivers.

Paul Starr Reality Checks Medicare for All

Paul Starr, the Princeton University heathcare expert and historian who advised the Clinton administration on its failed reform effort, did not have good reviews for Bernie Sanders’  “Medicare for All” plan during a speech during a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania. The plan, which would add dental, hearing, vision, and long-term care, would be so expensive that it “is not Medicare for all. It is Medicare for everything.”

This Week in the C-Suite

The debut of a new Managed Healthcare Executive feature was well-received by readers; the first installment reported on a changing of the guard at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. This week’s news features a report on a new CEO at Envision Healthcare and an update on Beacon Healthcare Systems.

Lumeon Collabs With Mayo Clinic to Improve Care Experiences

Lumeon and Mayo Clinic have announced a partnership to integrate Mayo’s library of clinical insights with Lumeon’s Care Pathway Management platform. The collaboration will allow  healthcare organizations to automate the delivery of personalized, time-sensitive digital content across both the clinical and operational aspects of a patient’s care journey, according to a news release.