The recent article, “The Savings Illusion — Why Clinical Quality Improvement Fails to Deliver Bottom-Line Results,” published December 14, 2011 in the New England Journal of Medicine, is a narrative at odds with itself, and in many ways, reality.

There are more cell phones in the world than toothbrushes. Do you believe that? Looking around my office I do, considering the fact that several of my colleagues have both personal and business phones on their desks at all times.

In the United States alone, over 250 million Americans have cell phones – 38% of which are used to access the Internet. 

As health organizations look to connect and communicate with their on-the-move, technologically integrated health populations, it has become apparent that with the popularity of mobile devices, the next step in your health outreach plan should revolve around some sort of health app.

At the current growth rate, high deductible insurance plans offered through employers will predominate within four years. This has broad implications, which are only beginning to be felt.

The first impact will be a significant reduction in employee health plan loss ratios. Initially, corporate health plan margins will improve significantly. However, federal caps on how the profits can be used will create a crisis for many commercial plans, which are not wired to make investments in member health.

Here's a quick roundup of recent articles that I thought were interesting, relevant to mHealth, and wanted to share! You're welcome in advance for providing you with a one-stop shop of three useful mHealth stories.

This year's Institute for Healthcare Improvement National Forum was certainly worth the time and money to attend.

Leaders who are focused on the advancement of healthcare quality from around the globe assembled in Orlando, Florida to demonstrate their achievements, identify barriers limiting the adoption of those methodologies, and create a road map for improving quality moving forward.

Among the many insightful points made, two important messages stuck out in my mind.

Chances are, your hospital is already making post discharge phone calls of some sort.

It's also likely that these are pretty basic calls — not much more than a survey. And until recently, these may have been enough.

But with patient satisfaction playing a more direct role in reimbursement — and the looming CMS penalties for excessive readmissions just over the horizon — viewing post discharge phone calls as a 'nice to have' rather than a strategic asset could be putting your hospital at risk. 

That's because with roughly 39 million inpatient discharges each year (not to mention ER discharges), connecting with patients quickly after discharge via the telephone has become a central part of any successful patient transition program — if done correctly.

Don't believe me?

Here are just four of the ways you can improve your post discharge phone calls.

In 1985, I was working in the semiconductor industry. The year was a blur; I had technical lead implementing a global Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that stretched from Europe to Asia. 

The night before “go live,” I sat in the operations room, reviewing the restart and recovery code for all background jobs that fed the system. At the time, fifty percent of ERP implementations were failing. Within the company, many people were hoping for the same — change was bad. 

However, the leadership understood we were dead as an organization unless we could succeed.

The U.S. Medicaid program is a joint federal and state program that helps low-income individuals or families pay for the costs associated with medical care.

Nationwide there are more than 50 million Medicaid beneficiaries, about 15% of which are children enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Medicaid beneficiaries struggle with poverty and many face physical and/or mental illness.

A 24-hour Nurse Advice Line is a critical support service that provides easy access to help and information. Here are just five of the many ways that 24-hour Nurse support is a critical resource for Medicaid beneficiaries.

The post discharge process is a unique opportunity to create a trusting relationship between clinician and patient; raise the general health literacy of the patient; teach the patient how to safely manage his or her condition; improve clinical processes; and communicate the values of the institution to the patient and the patient’s community.

Here are some ground level recommendations:

Full discloser, I am a big fan of zombie movies (I believe 'geek' is the technical term).

Have been since I was a kid. 

There's something in this particular movie genre that I've always found both terrifying and fascinating at the same time. 

But it wasn't until I began my career in healthcare that I realized what it was. It's the fact that the entire zombie mythos is based on a very real threat to the human race.

At its core, the zombie apocalypse is just a really, really bad pandemic.