Blog

May 15, 2020

Unprecedented Times Call for Unprecedented Humanity and Thoughtfulness

Is it just me or did March feel like a year and April flew by like a four-day week? I sit here on a Sunday morning in what was a… Read More

March 12, 2020

COVID-19 & Digital Health

In this time of public health crisis, we each have a responsibility and commitment to do whatever we can to keep our communities safe. Though the risk of contracting Coronavirus… Read More

January 30, 2020

Choose Your Future, Part 4: With AI: Crush Your Quadruple Aim Goals

When healthcare systems innovate with AI-driven virtual care automation, they bring needed human-to-human transformation back to a broken primary and urgent care system, and win Quadruple Aim results within six… Read More

January 9, 2020

Choose Your Future, Part 1: Wow Patients with AI

The same AI-powered technology that drives so many other mobile-friendly solutions that consumers trust to manage their daily lives can help health delivery systems “WOW” primary and urgent care healthcare… Read More

May 14, 2019

The Ladder of Care: Do Your Patients Know Where to go When They Get Sick?

When a patient isn’t feeling well, they want to get care as quickly as possible. But with primary care physician shortages, they may have to wait weeks—or even months—to see… Read More

November 15, 2018

Telehealth for Men—No Embarrassing Gowns Required

For almost as long as there have been doctors, there have been men who are reluctant to go see them. And that avoidance has real consequences. Experts speculate that the… Read More
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May 15, 2020

Unprecedented Times Call for Unprecedented Humanity and Thoughtfulness

Is it just me or did March feel like a year and April flew by like a four-day week? I sit here on a Sunday morning in what was a…
Read More »

May 6, 2020

Asynchronous Telehealth Gets CMS Green Light

As patients and healthcare providers have struggled to maintain access to care during the COVID-19 crisis, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has worked to ease regulations about…
Read More »

March 12, 2020

COVID-19 & Digital Health

In this time of public health crisis, we each have a responsibility and commitment to do whatever we can to keep our communities safe. Though the risk of contracting Coronavirus…
Read More »

February 29, 2020

COVID-19 Resources

We’ve collected and created some of the most current and reliably sourced information to help healthcare executives and providers stay informed during the pandemic. CARES Act Support Put the CARES…
Read More »

January 30, 2020

Choose Your Future, Part 4: With AI: Crush Your Quadruple Aim Goals

When healthcare systems innovate with AI-driven virtual care automation, they bring needed human-to-human transformation back to a broken primary and urgent care system, and win Quadruple Aim results within six…
Read More »

January 28, 2020

Choose Your Future, Part 3: With AI: Shape the Caliber of Your Healthcare System

Doctors typically go into medicine for noble reasons, but a fractured primary and urgent care system is burying physicians in a level of busy-work that’s burning them out and creating…
Read More »

January 20, 2020

Choose Your Future, Part 2: With AI: Move from Stagnation to Transformation Within Weeks

In today’s primary and urgent care crisis, healthcare delivery systems must act now to innovate and transform or fall behind and disappear. Learn how adoption of an AI-driven virtual care…
Read More »

January 9, 2020

Choose Your Future, Part 1: Wow Patients with AI

The same AI-powered technology that drives so many other mobile-friendly solutions that consumers trust to manage their daily lives can help health delivery systems “WOW” primary and urgent care healthcare…
Read More »

December 18, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Is it possible to fix algorithmic bias, why “telehealth” isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, and Ray’s take on who patients trust for consumer-friendly healthcare

Obviously, we’re big fans of technology and the promise it holds to improve healthcare for stakeholders on both sides of care. As you’ll see from the links below, we spent…
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December 11, 2019

Bright.md Digest: How telehealth connects patients with Santa, what happens when product teams and doctors bump heads, and why traditional providers still have the advantage over big tech

It’s the holiday season, which means there are more cookies than usual in the office (and there are usually a lot of cookies in the office), the tree is up,…
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November 13, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Retail and telehealth, technology, and how big tech companies like Amazon are changing healthcare

When patients are given options, they engage more with their healthcare. That's the lesson Walmart's VP of transformation Marcus Osborne espoused at HLTH 2019 last week. "The healthcare system is…
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October 23, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Healthcare independent of hospitals, telehealth reimbursement parity, and virtual care for patients who don’t want to be “seen”

Welcome to the Halloween edition of the Bright.md Digest! As we at Bright.md HQ put the finishing touches on our costumes, stock up on candy, and bob for apples (OK,…
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October 3, 2019

PAs Deserve a Seat at the Telehealth Table

Guest blog post by Amanda Shelley, PA-C from Physician Assistants in Virtual Medicine and Telemedicine The explosion of telehealth offerings over the past several years has been great for patients.…
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September 25, 2019

Interoperability is the Key to Virtual Care Success

Many healthcare systems have gotten the memo: to stay competitive in today’s consumer-centric landscape by retaining and attracting patients, they must offer a convenient virtual care option to patients. In…
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August 28, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Telehealth in disaster recovery and nursing homes, and the devastation caused by healthcare fraud

As we enter hurricane season, it’s worth pondering what role telehealth can play in disaster recovery. We’ve already seen some success stories, but as access to virtual care grows, so…
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August 7, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Doctors’ unions, politicians devoted to improving healthcare, rural use of telehealth, and some levity about physician burnout

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) visited the Bright.md offices to discuss healthcare and how telehealth platforms like SmartExam can help the chronically ill. Senator Wyden architected the Chronic Care Act…
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July 24, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Healthcare and aging patients, the digital experience at Kaiser Permanente, and telemedicine use is up dramatically (or is it?)

How will an aging American population impact an already overburdened healthcare system? Forbes asked three healthcare industry leaders what issues and problems they're identifying and working to solve. Why An…
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July 10, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Email overload, telehealth for rural communities, and doctors’ role in reducing drug prices

When we think about EHRs and their link to physician burnout, we picture tired clinicians punching keys late at night. But a new study has found a connection between burnout…
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June 26, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Patients’ top complaints, finding healthcare after a disaster, and when will telehealth simply be ‘health’?

The water cooler (i.e. Slack) conversations in the Bright.md office recently include discussions of what patients really complain about regarding their healthcare; how the town of Paradise, California, is rethinking…
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June 11, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Telehealth myths that need to die, why medical practitioners are so prone to burnout, and Bright.md at the top of the New Wave

Ann Mond Johnson, CEO of the American Telemedicine Association, shared the top seven myths about telehealth at last week’s Telehealth19 in Atlanta. A few that we’d be happy to see…
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June 5, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Primary care shortages, access to women’s health, and the high cost of physician burnout

Slack was buzzing this week with discussions about where patients are seeking primary and urgent care as PCP shortages grow, how telehealth has the potential to aid women seeking abortions…
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May 28, 2019

The Ladder of Care 2: Asynchronous Telehealth Should be the First Step

You want your patients to get the most appropriate, affordable, and convenient care for what ails them. When it comes to low-acuity conditions, would that care be better sought in…
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May 22, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Lowering costs, increasing access, and antibiotic stewardship with telehealth

This week the Slack chatter at Bright.md included insights about how telemedicine lowers costs and improves rural access to healthcare, and how non-video telehealth can help in the fight against…
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May 14, 2019

The Ladder of Care: Do Your Patients Know Where to go When They Get Sick?

When a patient isn’t feeling well, they want to get care as quickly as possible. But with primary care physician shortages, they may have to wait weeks—or even months—to see…
Read More »

May 8, 2019

Bright.md Digest: Healthcare automation, interoperability, and why men avoid going to the doctor

At Bright.md, we have a Slack channel called #newsandresources. Anyone in the company can share links to news or items of interest they found on the web. (This channel is not…
Read More »

May 2, 2019

When Consumerism and Healthcare Collide

As consumerism takes hold in healthcare, patient expectations for fast, convenient, and easy tools to take care of themselves are driving huge shifts in the industry. They are also creating…
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March 27, 2019

Your Telehealth Solution is Only as Good as the Clinical Content

Changing regulatory and reimbursement landscapes are shifting the emphasis from volume to value. Telehealth can be the solution. But how can you be assured your telehealth vendor's clinical content is…
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March 15, 2019

Watch a Demo of Bright.md SmartExam—Direct-to-patient Telehealth for Healthcare Systems

SmartExam is Bright.md's comprehensive direct-to-patient telehealth solution for healthcare systems that delights patients --and providers. To see how it works, you can see the patient experience of the Low Pack…
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March 14, 2019

Winona Health Increases Access to Quality, Fast, and Affordable Care with SmartExam

Rachelle Schultz, EdD, Winona's President and CEO, recently shared in her online column how SmartExam meets the needs of patients, providers, and the healthcare system. This offering is specifically designed…
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January 3, 2019

Lessons From Retail: What can Healthcare Execs Learn from Successful—and Defunct—Businesses?

A few months ago, I was visiting a large healthcare system and speaking to C-suite executives. The conference room we were sitting in had an expansive view that included a…
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December 27, 2018

Bright.md’s Brightest Blog Posts of 2018

Our goal with the Bright Ideas Blog is to share our expertise in the arena of virtual care, and to give our readers thought-provoking stories on the healthcare industry. We want to…
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November 15, 2018

Telehealth for Men—No Embarrassing Gowns Required

For almost as long as there have been doctors, there have been men who are reluctant to go see them. And that avoidance has real consequences. Experts speculate that the…
Read More »

November 6, 2018

Focus on Women’s Care can Improve Health System Wellness, Part 3

If you’ve read parts one and two of this series, you should have a good grasp of (and maybe a little trepidation about) the power of women when it comes…
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November 1, 2018

Focus on Women’s Care can Improve Health System Wellness, Part 2

In part one of this series, we explored how often women make the healthcare decisions for their own health and that of their families. In this part, we’ll dig into why women’s…
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October 29, 2018

Focus on Women’s Care can Improve Health System Wellness, Part 1

As Jane Austen once noted, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a body will at some point be in want of healthcare. However, what…
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September 12, 2018

Can Virtual Care Help Prevent Physician Burnout?

Physician burnout is at a frightening all-time high. In a recent study conducted by Stanford University School of Medicine, more than half of the 6,000 surveyed physicians reported feelings of burnout,…
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August 29, 2018

Meeting Consumers’ Growing Expectations with Virtual Care

McKinsey recently released their latest report on healthcare consumerism, and the results—though not terribly surprising—suggest that patients-as-consumers are driving powerful changes in the healthcare industry. After gathering data from more than…
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August 3, 2018

Are you Making the Most of Every Patient Touch Point?

In parts one and two of this series, we learned that a lack of awareness and concerns about quality are holding many patients back when it comes to using telehealth…
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July 19, 2018

Taking the Question of Quality out of the Equation

In part one of this series, we learned that one big obstacle to patient adoption of telehealth and virtual visits is an issue of awareness. In this post, we’ll explore…
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July 16, 2018

Want to Delight Patients? Boost Telehealth Adoption

It’s routine. “There’s an app for that.” Who among us hasn’t uttered those words? We use our smartphones to summon rides to the airport, order takeout, and buy groceries. Conveniences…
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