Author: knjohn

Health IT Costs Hit $32K Per Doctor Annually | Forbes

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With electronic health records and the move to population health spreading across the U.S., physician costs to keep up have reached more than $32,000 per doctor annually.

Doctor-owned multi-specialty practices spent more than $32,500 in 2015 on new health IT, staff, maintenance and related costs last year, according to a new analysis from the Medical Group Management Association. The news isn’t so great for doctors, who have watched their health IT expenses climb more than 40% since 2009 before government rules and related financial repercussions began pushing them into the digital age. Divya Shroff, associate chief of staff at the Veterans Administration Hospital, left, shows medical students the facility’s electronic medical records system in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 9, 2009. (Bloomberg photo: Joshua Roberts)

“While technology plays a crucial role in helping healthcare organizations evolve to provide higher-quality, value-based care, this transition is becoming increasingly expensive,” Dr. Halee Fischer-Wright, chief executive of the Medical Group Management Association said in a statement accompanying the analysis. MGMA drew responses from more than 3,100 doctor practices across the country for its figures.

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Yahoo launches a TV watching site, Yahoo View, in partnership with Hulu | TechCrunch

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Yahoo this morning is making a play for cord cutters with the launch of a new TV watching site called Yahoo View, featuring Hulu’s free content. The site will now become one of the only ways to watch Hulu’s TV shows and movies for free, as the company is planning to wind down its free version in favor of its subscription services – a plan that was already in the works ahead of the Yahoo partnership.

Yahoo [disclosure: Yahoo and TechCrunch are now both owned by Verizon] and Hulu have had a long-standing relationship for years, which saw Yahoo acting as a distributor of Hulu content, but this particular deal has been in the works for around six months.

And while Yahoo now has the status of “preferred partner,” it’s not an exclusive distribution partner – Hulu content is also available through a number of other sources, including Comcast, and on websites that carry its player, like People.com, EW, New York Magazine, and others.

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Will China’s ‘elevated bus’ really work? | Money CNN

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The test run of a futuristic elevated bus cruising over the top of cars in China has generated a lot of buzz. But can it really work?

Experts say the massive vehicle faces a raft of challenges, and even if they’re overcome it will be many years before any of the country’s congested cities adopts the new transportation system.

“This is a unique idea to encourage people to improve the quality of transportation,” said Daizong Liu, China transport program director at the World Resources Institute. “But there are many related concerns.”

“Safety is the most important,” he said. “How would cars drive and turn under the bus? If there is an accident, how would you move passengers and vehicles out from underneath?”

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The History of Women in the Olympic Games Is Not What You Think | Blinkist

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The 1900 Olympic Games marked a new era of equality in athletics: women were allowed to compete in the all-male games for the very first time.

Or at least that’s what Google and the Olympics’ official website would have you think.

Although this fact has slipped from the pediments of modern cultural conscience, women were participating in—and winning—the Olympic Games way back in the days of empires and chariots. What makes this especially remarkable is that women were not technically allowed to take part in the Games at all, and only unwed virgins could watch. Grown and married women who dared have a peek at what went on in the stadium did so under the mythical-sounding penalty of being hurled from the cliffs of Mount Typaeum. Understandably, this punishment was enough to dissuade many of the fairer sex.

But not all of them—and definitely not one Spartan woman named Cynisca.

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British food delivery startup Deliveroo raises $275M in funding | Mashable

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Deliveroo, a food delivery service that is facing competition from UberEats in Europe, raised $275 million in Series E funding, the startup announced Friday.

Launched in 2013, Deliveroo delivers slightly upscale restaurant food along with alcohol, breakfast and large corporate orders. The service handles the logistics of delivery for restaurants, helping boost their sales for a flat fee.

Since its launch, the London-based startup has raised $475 million. It’s currently in 84 cities throughout Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

Its most recent funding round was led by Bridgepoint, the UK’s largest private equity group, along with prior investor DST Global, US-based General Catalyst and existing investor Greenoaks Capital.

In November, Deliveroo raised $100 million in a Series D round.

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Why You Should Invest in Video Marketing to Grow Your Business | Small Biz Trends

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In the rapidly evolving landscape of marketing, businesses are constantly required to come up with improved ways to promote themselves and attract valuable leads. The rising customer expectations have led businesses to develop new strategies to meet and exceed the demands.

One of these strategies that have gained momentum recently is video marketing.

There is hardly any doubt about the fact that video-driven platforms are well-received by today’s generation. In fact, Snapchat has overtaken Twitter with a user base of more than 150 million every day compared to the 136 million daily users of Twitter.

Such increased popularity of videos has convinced businesses to rethink their digital marketing strategies and include videos to attract a flood of customers.

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Know the Rules Before Your Organization Brings in Interns | Payroll Link

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062315_Thinkstock177519226_lores_KKIf you have a backlog of projects piling up because there just aren’t enough hours in the day, you may consider hiring interns to help you get caught up. This can be a great idea that provides benefits for your company and the students.

However, if you want help from interns, don’t expect to get it for free. The requirements for unpaid internships are strict. In recent years, there’s been a wave of legal actions taken by those who’ve served as interns. They’ve accused employers of violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and/or state laws by not paying them.

The Department of Labor (DOL) has a six-factor test that you can use to determine whether a relationship with a worker could qualify as an unpaid internship. Keep in mind that this is a test, not a law. But don’t take it lightly — or you risk the possibility of incurring a fine or other legal action.

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Marketing is the biggest difference between a purebred dog and a mutt | Business Insider

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Dogs are big business.

In Kim Kavin’s “The Dog Merchants: Inside the Big Business of Breeders, Pet Stores, and Rescuers,” she delves into the business of buying, selling, and rescuing dogs, which she estimates is worth about $11 billion annually worldwide.

If you love dogs, the dogs-as-business approach might be hard to swallow. How could your furry family member be bought, marketed, and sold as a product? How could anyone buy a “puppy mill” dog from a pet store — or alternatively, how could anyone adopt a mutt without a documented history? How will you know what you’re going to get?

But there’s one glaring conclusion in Kavin’s pages: These dogs are all the same.

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Get Ready, Soon Everyone Will Be Able To Code | Co.Exist 

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Code runs the world, but coding today isn’t for everyone. Generally, it’s still done by a select group of mostly male, math-literate programmers, and the rest of us are just consumers rather than participants in code’s production. “The distance between using your computer and programing your computer has gotten wider and wider.”

Could that be about to change? The media theorist Douglas Rushkoff thinks so. He’s been championing a new iPad app called Ready that he thinks marks an important shift in our relationship with software.

“The distance between using your computer and programing your computer has gotten wider and wider,” he says. “I’ve been discouraged that most portals to being a digital creator have involved these really difficult coding languages that require you to be at a certain level of sophistication in mathematics. Ready has a really simple interface that lets people have the experience of programming something for themselves.”

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