Article: Healthy Results from IT Investments
My company (Lancet Software) has been working closely with one of our partners (Solutions for Healthcare) to create a commercially viable, lightweight, electronic medical record for small to medium sized clinics. The Minneapolis StarTribune was kind enough to run an article by me this morning in the business section.
Wanting health care costs to go down is a lot like talking about lousy weather and the playoff performances of Minnesota's pro sports franchises: Everybody wrings their hands, but the weather vane keeps spinning and the scoreboard totals are depressingly correct.
But in health care, at least, solutions that look promising are emerging. The recent federal government report, "The Decade of Health Information Technology," issued to coincide with formation of a national private-sector consortium (the Health Information Technology Leadership Panel), estimates that if patient records were in electronic form, 10 percent of the nation's annual health care bill -- $140 billion a year -- could be saved.
The reality piece is where it gets sticky.
According to a New York Times story by way of the Gartner Group, health care investment in information technology (IT) is slow and minuscule: Only 13 percent of the country's 6,000-plus hospitals currently use any kind of electronic patient record system. Meanwhile, the $1.5 trillion-dollar health care industry spends on average $3,000 on IT investments for each worker. That compares with $7,000 per worker in private industry and almost $15,000 in banking.
Hospitals and clinics argue that the dollar and time costs of investment are significant barriers to making the much-needed change. But those comparative investment figures seem to be asking, "What's more important, your money or your life?"
And that's disturbing, because the federal report makes clear that health care IT benefits don't stop at mere cost savings, they extend into quality care and longevity.
According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, today's medical errors associated with paper handling and patient record-keeping alone are estimated to be responsible for 45,000 to 98,000 deaths a year nationally.
Related stories in the Star Tribune and a recent talk by Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the Mayo Clinic in January indicate that Minnesota must shore up its IT inadequacies in the medical arena as soon as possible.
While no system will ever be perfect, health care IT applications can contribute significantly better results than the ones being posted in the old-school way, especially with patient records and doctors' chronically illegible handwritten notes.
The new-school method relies on the quick electronic entry and delivery of patient information across several departments, doctors, administrative roles and even billing procedures.
The benefits shown by one physician-owned clinic system in central California (Visalia Medical Clinic) that switched to an electronic patient data record are worth noting for our health care institutions here in Minnesota. (In the interest of full disclosure, my company played a role in recrafting the clinic's master patient index -- MPI -- along with another Minnesota-based company, Health Care Solutions.)
The Visalia clinic faces many of the same operational issues as other health care organizations. As the leading medical provider in the area, Visalia's patient administrative data, clinical records and physician transcriptions represented a sizeable challenge in managing the organization's increasing information database.
Visalia's former CEO (now a consultant to other central California clinics), Bill Brouwer, encouraged the clinic "to think five steps ahead" in managing health care. That's sound advice for everyone.
Today the clinic has an Intranet model that serves as a data warehouse for transcription, radiology reports and lab results. By providing anytime, anywhere access to a more complete and readable record of its patients, the new MPI is revolutionizing the way Visalia patient data is made available to all health care professionals in the clinic. The Web-based application is improving operating efficiencies -- and the bottom line -- by speeding the workflow processes. The benefits are telling:
• A once-costly and cumbersome transcription process has been altered so that now physicians use digital recorders that are easily input into the master patient index, with pertinent patient-related information made available over a protected internal Intranet site.
• Patient records are scanned into the index, including numerous forms and data that reside on other clinic computers, centralizing all the information in one location.
• The index integrates scheduling information, which captures appointment dates and the reason for the patient visit.
• Billing information is made available more quickly and accurately via the same Intranet.
It's a creative and innovative health care management toolset. And it's pulling its weight.
"The MPI gives the clinic physicians, management and administration greater access to patient information, while reducing the time and cost of accessing that information, its delivery, analysis and storage," Brouwer said.
The MPI benefits the clinic's physician-owners, the operation of the clinic and, most importantly, its patients. It's a model program and it couldn't come at more propitious time: The Institute of Medicine would like to eliminate "most handwritten clinical data by the end of the decade."
It's an achievable goal.
But the onus is on physicians and the health care business. According to the nonprofit Markle Foundation, if health information sharing is to be improved, technology must be adopted by physicians in small and midsize practices, because this group represents more than half of the nation's physicians and the ones least likely to use IT advances.
If this large segment of health care providers can take that simple first step of throwing away the notepads and pencils and adopting electronic devices and intranets, that will put us on the path to reining in health care costs, life-threatening mistakes and endless complaints.
Link
Wanting health care costs to go down is a lot like talking about lousy weather and the playoff performances of Minnesota's pro sports franchises: Everybody wrings their hands, but the weather vane keeps spinning and the scoreboard totals are depressingly correct.
But in health care, at least, solutions that look promising are emerging. The recent federal government report, "The Decade of Health Information Technology," issued to coincide with formation of a national private-sector consortium (the Health Information Technology Leadership Panel), estimates that if patient records were in electronic form, 10 percent of the nation's annual health care bill -- $140 billion a year -- could be saved.
The reality piece is where it gets sticky.
According to a New York Times story by way of the Gartner Group, health care investment in information technology (IT) is slow and minuscule: Only 13 percent of the country's 6,000-plus hospitals currently use any kind of electronic patient record system. Meanwhile, the $1.5 trillion-dollar health care industry spends on average $3,000 on IT investments for each worker. That compares with $7,000 per worker in private industry and almost $15,000 in banking.
Hospitals and clinics argue that the dollar and time costs of investment are significant barriers to making the much-needed change. But those comparative investment figures seem to be asking, "What's more important, your money or your life?"
And that's disturbing, because the federal report makes clear that health care IT benefits don't stop at mere cost savings, they extend into quality care and longevity.
According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, today's medical errors associated with paper handling and patient record-keeping alone are estimated to be responsible for 45,000 to 98,000 deaths a year nationally.
Related stories in the Star Tribune and a recent talk by Gov. Tim Pawlenty at the Mayo Clinic in January indicate that Minnesota must shore up its IT inadequacies in the medical arena as soon as possible.
While no system will ever be perfect, health care IT applications can contribute significantly better results than the ones being posted in the old-school way, especially with patient records and doctors' chronically illegible handwritten notes.
The new-school method relies on the quick electronic entry and delivery of patient information across several departments, doctors, administrative roles and even billing procedures.
The benefits shown by one physician-owned clinic system in central California (Visalia Medical Clinic) that switched to an electronic patient data record are worth noting for our health care institutions here in Minnesota. (In the interest of full disclosure, my company played a role in recrafting the clinic's master patient index -- MPI -- along with another Minnesota-based company, Health Care Solutions.)
The Visalia clinic faces many of the same operational issues as other health care organizations. As the leading medical provider in the area, Visalia's patient administrative data, clinical records and physician transcriptions represented a sizeable challenge in managing the organization's increasing information database.
Visalia's former CEO (now a consultant to other central California clinics), Bill Brouwer, encouraged the clinic "to think five steps ahead" in managing health care. That's sound advice for everyone.
Today the clinic has an Intranet model that serves as a data warehouse for transcription, radiology reports and lab results. By providing anytime, anywhere access to a more complete and readable record of its patients, the new MPI is revolutionizing the way Visalia patient data is made available to all health care professionals in the clinic. The Web-based application is improving operating efficiencies -- and the bottom line -- by speeding the workflow processes. The benefits are telling:
• A once-costly and cumbersome transcription process has been altered so that now physicians use digital recorders that are easily input into the master patient index, with pertinent patient-related information made available over a protected internal Intranet site.
• Patient records are scanned into the index, including numerous forms and data that reside on other clinic computers, centralizing all the information in one location.
• The index integrates scheduling information, which captures appointment dates and the reason for the patient visit.
• Billing information is made available more quickly and accurately via the same Intranet.
It's a creative and innovative health care management toolset. And it's pulling its weight.
"The MPI gives the clinic physicians, management and administration greater access to patient information, while reducing the time and cost of accessing that information, its delivery, analysis and storage," Brouwer said.
The MPI benefits the clinic's physician-owners, the operation of the clinic and, most importantly, its patients. It's a model program and it couldn't come at more propitious time: The Institute of Medicine would like to eliminate "most handwritten clinical data by the end of the decade."
It's an achievable goal.
But the onus is on physicians and the health care business. According to the nonprofit Markle Foundation, if health information sharing is to be improved, technology must be adopted by physicians in small and midsize practices, because this group represents more than half of the nation's physicians and the ones least likely to use IT advances.
If this large segment of health care providers can take that simple first step of throwing away the notepads and pencils and adopting electronic devices and intranets, that will put us on the path to reining in health care costs, life-threatening mistakes and endless complaints.
posted by Unknown at 7:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home