Health IT In 2015: What's In The Cards?
Healthcare CIOs need to build on existing groundwork to improve compliance and efficiency in what should be a demanding year.
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Healthcare IT professionals are in for another busy year in 2015, as medical organizations look for ways to build on the groundwork they've already laid with their investments in electronic health records (EHRs), early big data and analytics trials, and experiments in patient engagement and population health.
They'll also need to address federal mandates including Meaningful Use Stage 2, the push-pull of ICD-10 deadlines, and the government's demand for healthcare systems interoperability. No matter who resides at the White House after the 2016 election, throughout 2015 healthcare organizations should act as though the Affordable Care Act -- aka Obamacare -- will survive, in some form or another, several executives predicted.
"Despite no shortage of bombastic political theater, there’s going to be no way to put this genie back in the bottle. It would be political suicide to take away coverage from the tens of millions of newly insured," Dr. Peter Alperin, an internist at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, as well as VP and general manager of Connectivity Solutions at Doximity, told InformationWeek. "Physicians and health systems will need to find ways to deal with the new landscape of patients."
Many of these methods will rely on technologies that trim costs and inefficiencies, introduce best practices, and learn from other industries, such as manufacturing and finance, healthcare professionals predicted.
"Everyone is talking about the infrastructure or the 'how' -- analytics, mobile, etc. -- but the real focus needs to be on 'what and why' all this stuff is about results. It's the next logical step in the 'businessization' of healthcare," Jordan Dolin, co-founder of Emmi Solutions, told InformationWeek. "A big prediction for healthcare 2015 is that we'll see innovations around personalization, patient-centric, convenient mobile and population health. Analytics is not the hard part, it's knowing what to do with the data and we'll see more progress in that area."
Of course, healthcare organizations will continue investing in cloud, security, mobile (including wearables), and messaging. They will lobby for laws such as the MEDTECH Act, which concerns regulation of patient records and decision-support software, and argue the pros and cons of once again delaying ICD-10. Telehealth will gain even more traction as lawmakers, payers, and providers knock down some of the remaining boundaries.
They'll have to: People are living longer, healthier lives at a time when healthcare costs are growing at the same as -- or faster than -- the cost of living, said John Tempesco, senior director of marketing at AtHoc and former CIO for the Naval Medical Department Northeast Region.
"Technology companies are responding to both of these trends by creating direct-to-patient technology to help them remain independent and healthy," Tempesco told InformationWeek. "The benefits of this technology trend will not be realized until the data collected by these innovations can be incorporated in a meaningful way into the electronic health record to advance both preventive and predictive health interactions. The trick will be, with so much data, how can we cut through the noise to provide meaningful results to providers in order to meet the triple aim of cost reduction, improved quality, and patient satisfaction?"
CIOs and their teams should keep some other big-picture changes in mind as they consider new IT initiatives and discuss departments' plans. Organizations with a culture of open communication and a foundation of transparency and cooperation are best equipped to leverage the right technologies at the right time to help peers meet these, and other, challenges in the year ahead.
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Increased consolidation among hospitals concerns some providers about an impending dearth of smaller, independent practices and the effect this will have on patients. For IT departments, it often means integrating multiple EHRs, databases, communication systems, and other technologies, perhaps while simultaneously combining IT departments and cultures and coping with unhappy staff members.
In fact, 69% of physicians expressed concerns relative to clinical autonomy and their ability to make the best decisions for their patients, according to the Physicians Foundation 2014 Biennial Physician Survey. "Since the rate of medical consolidation shows no signs of abating, it is imperative that hospitals and physicians work together to ensure that clinical decisions are being made independent of any bureaucratic or organizational pressures that could potentially affect the integrity of medical decision-making," the organization said.
Doctors will continue to abandon private practice in favor of shared risk or employed arrangements, and EHR consolidation in the ambulatory market will result," Missy Krasner, managing director of healthcare & life sciences at Box, told InformationWeek earlier this year.
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"The majority of healthcare spending in the United States is controlled by a physician's pen," Dr. Peter Alperin, San Francisco VA Medical Center internist and Doximity VP, told InformationWeek. That trend is shifting, as health systems and individual departments use analytics, big data, and clinical systems to create guidelines for treatment.
While some physicians view this shift in a negative light, "it is clear that variation for no defensible reason degrades care quality," Alperin said.
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Despite difficulty finding primary care physicians in some areas, patients are gaining more control over their treatment, their data, and their costs. New transparency in pricing, once tightly controlled by providers, now allows consumers to start shopping around for medications and everything from office visits to surgeries.
Some practices, particularly clinics, compete for patients through scheduling and waiting room technologies, portals and kiosks, and other methods to respect consumers' time. Expect that to continue into 2015 and beyond.
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Two new studies show limits in residency hours do not hurt or harm patient safety, Dr. Peter Alperin of the San Francisco VA Medical Center and Doximity, told InformationWeek.
"Will medical school training be extended? Restrictions on intern hours loosened?" he remarked. "Most likely, there will be a lot of debate and headaches for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but little actual [medical education] change next year."
This could ultimately mean changes for IT departments that must track residents' hours and permissions. Healthcare providers without automated systems for interns' medical permissions may want to consider investing in this technology, especially if ACGME rules fluctuate.
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The entire spectrum of healthcare organizations will demand more from analytics in 2015, said Jon Zimmerman, VP and general manager at GE Healthcare IT Clinical Business Solutions, in an interview. Payment reforms are, in part, driving this hunger for usable information, he said.
For example, organization leaders are seeking patterns that can help them close revenue deficits; hunting for repeated areas of denials; and looking for ways to eliminate the amount of manual documentation clinicians must do, he said.
(Source: PublicDomainPictures)
The entire spectrum of healthcare organizations will demand more from analytics in 2015, said Jon Zimmerman, VP and general manager at GE Healthcare IT Clinical Business Solutions, in an interview. Payment reforms are, in part, driving this hunger for usable information, he said.
For example, organization leaders are seeking patterns that can help them close revenue deficits; hunting for repeated areas of denials; and looking for ways to eliminate the amount of manual documentation clinicians must do, he said.
(Source: PublicDomainPictures)
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