Thought Leaders

In an era of emerging community connectivity, the hospital is the center of the universe—not the government, not payers and not independent physician practices, but the hospital. If emerging community connectivity transpires, it will derive its existence from (and owe its existence to) hospitals

The United States spends more on healthcare than any other country, but lags behind many European countries in deploying healthcare information technology (HIT) systems that improve the quality of care and enhance efficiency. In fact, we are at least 10 years behind many European countries in adopting HIT. Other countries have widely accepted the idea that HIT can lower overall health spending and improve outcomes, a much broader view of their return on investment (ROI) than is accepted within the U.S.

As a young man, I was on an aircraft carrier that tested the first “do everything” fighter aircraft, the F111. For the Navy, it was to be a carrier-launched fighter to protect the fleet; for the Air Force, a long-range tactical aircraft. Although beautiful and fast, the F111 was too long and too heavy for our ship and, fully loaded, couldn’t fly far enough for nuclear and tactical support. Pleasing neither audience and fulfilling neither vision, the program and its technology were scrapped.

Sixteen independent hospital systems jointly save $1.4 million annually.

Interoperability has become one of the hottest topics in healthcare and is recognized as an extremely worthwhile objective. Virtually all segments of the industry—payers, providers and vendors alike—support efforts to share critical information contained in electronic health records.

Historically, electronic medical record (EMR) systems and healthcare information management (HIM) systems have been poorly integrated. Each has evolved independently of the other to serve different purposes. The more complex the accreditation, regulatory and reimbursement environments become for providers, the more problematic the lack of integration between EMR and HIM systems becomes. Now, the rise of pay for performance (P4P) as a central strategy for healthcare cost containment by payers promises to dramatically increase the business cost of this disconnect to provider organizations.

The EMR horse is out of the stable and galloping full speed ahead, and it could race right over the industry if we don’t take a hard look at the current EMR software model presently being offered to providers.

The media is awash with commentary from government and private sector industry chieftains expressing their shock that healthcare has not adopted technology for electronic healthcare records (EHR). It appears incomprehensible that the same technology solutions that make corporate America efficient and productive are not being adopted quickly in healthcare.