June/July 2019

By the Numbers
For The Record
Vol. 31 No. 6 P. 34

1/3
According to a study by VisitPay, this fraction of respondents said rising health care costs influence their ability to seek care, and 65% said cost strongly influences their overall satisfaction with their hospital or physician. However, 57% of health systems do not discuss costs with patients.

88.2
In the 2019 Best in KLAS Software and Services report, Epic was named the top overall software suite for the ninth consecutive year. The EpicCare Inpatient EMR, which holds more than 200 million patients’ EMRs, received this overall score for its implementation in large hospitals.

$7.5 Million
UCLA Health has agreed to pay this amount to settle a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of victims of a data breach that was discovered in October 2014, according to HIPAA Journal. The breach, in which hackers gained access to parts of the network containing patients’ protected health information, affected 4.5 million patients. Of the settlement, $2 million has been set aside to cover patients’ claims and $5.5 million will be paid into a cybersecurity fund to improve cybersecurity defenses at UCLA Health.

66
A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found first-year internal medicine residents spend more time participating in indirect patient care than interacting with patients or in dedicated educational activities. This percentage of their time was spent in indirect patient care, mostly interactions with the patient’s medical record or documentation (43%), while only 13% was spent in direct patient care and 7% in education.

47.5
Despite widespread availability of electronic prior authorization (ePA) solutions, provider adoption lags behind, with only this percentage of PA requests occurring through ePA. According to the 2019 ePA National Adoption Scorecard, 62% of PA requests submitted electronically receive a determination in less than two hours, compared with 0% of PA requests completed via the traditional phone and fax method. Additionally, ePA solutions can lead to an 80% higher dispense rate and 3% greater likelihood that patients pick up their medications due to the faster turnaround times on PA determinations, compared with PA requests completed via the traditional phone and fax method.

20
Real-time benefit check solutions that deliver at least 97% accuracy for prescription cost information at the point of prescribing can lead to an increase of nearly this percentage in medication adherence, according to CoverMyMeds.

$3.5 Million
According to The Boston Globe, Boston Children’s Hospital filed a lawsuit against a Saudi Arabian prince, alleging he owes the hospital this amount. He reportedly agreed to pay for care provided to a 2-year-old Saudi Arabian child with type 1 spinal muscular atrophy—the treatment for which is not available in Saudi Arabia—who has been a patient at Boston Children’s since November 2017. The prince allegedly stopped paying for the child’s care after making an initial payment of $750,000.