Just an occasional post when I come upon a few interesting reports and resources that are worth a download or browse. This week we have a few.
First we have:
HIT Lessons from Across the Pond
Carrie Vaughan, for HealthLeaders Media, August 4, 2009
I often hear how other countries are ahead of the United States when it comes to using electronic health records and exchanging electronic health information. For example, Don E. Detmer, MD, president and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association, referred to Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan as countries that are ahead of us in this arena at a recent Nashville Health Care Council meeting. "We can learn a lot from these experiments," he said, acknowledging that no one has it totally figured out yet. "It is a tapestry that has different bright spots."
That is why I found a recent report, Accomplishing EHR/HIE (eHealth): Lessons from Europe," by CSC, a global consultancy firm, so interesting. It focuses on those "bright spots" and pulls 25 lessons learned from initiatives in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Granted there are key differences between these countries' efforts and the United States. The size of the European efforts is far smaller, for one. However, the initiatives are comparable and have encountered many of the same obstacles and issues. "The UK is 60 million people," says Fran Turisco, a coauthor of the report and research principal, emerging practices for CSC. While smaller than the US, "it is not eeny meeny," she says. Many of these countries also had a different starting place. In Denmark, The Netherlands, and Norway, EHR adoption by general practitioners is approaching 100%, compared to 20%, at most, in the United States, the report says. The U.S. effort is still focused on changing workflows and switching from paper to digital records in addition to exchanging data and becoming interoperable.
More here with a list of key points:
This is a very useful report – many of the points need to be carefully considered here in OZ as well.
Important stuff needing careful review.
Second we have:
AHRQ offers guide for evaluating health IT projects
August 3, 2009 — 8:01am ET | By Anne Zieger
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has weighed in with a step-by-step workbook helping providers get a handle on the actual cost and benefits and IT investment offers.
The guide walks IT project managers through the process of picking out project goals, including what aspects of the technology will need to be measured and how. It also offers proposed measures to evaluate, such as preventable adverse drug events and medication errors, as well as others impacting workflow and financial management. The idea is to make predictions ahead of time, then analyze those predictions later, learning from what assumptions were correct and which were not.
More here:
This is very useful indeed and needs to be used!
The report can be downloaded from here:
http://healthit.ahrq.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_1248_875888_0_0_18/09_0083_EF.pdf
Third we have:
RAND Health: Analyzing the core issues in health care reform
For forty years, RAND analysts have been providing objective research on many of the topics now at the heart of the health reform debate. Read highlights of this work in key issue areas.
- Increasing Access to Health Care
- Increasing Health Insurance Coverage
- Decreasing Costs and Increasing Quality
- Decreasing Health Spending
- Promoting Wellness and Prevention
RAND COMPARE
Facts you can use, analysis you can trust
COMPARE (Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts) is a first-of-its-kind online resource that synthesizes what is known about the current health care system, provides information on proposals to modify the system, and delivers facts and analysis about how potential policy changes are likely to affect health care delivery and costs in the United States. RAND Health created COMPARE to provide an unbiased source of information to help policymakers, the media, and other interested parties understand, design, and evaluate health policies.
More here:
http://www.rand.org/health/feature/health_care_reform_debate/
This is a useful resource providing information on many aspects of macro health reform.
Fourth we have:
Games For Health: The Latest Tool In The Medical Care Arsenal
Carleen Hawn 1*
1 Carleen Hawn is cofounder and editor of Healthspottr.com in San Francisco, California.
*Corresponding author.
At the heart of any promising plan to transform the health care system lie two priorities: broader access to care for patients, and deeper engagement in health care by patients. Although the problem of expanding access to affordable care remains unresolved, new tools for deepening consumers' engagement in health care are proliferating like viral spores in a virtual pond. Digital games, including virtual realities, computer simulations, and online play, are valuable tools for fostering patient participation in health-related activities. This is why gaming is the latest tool in the arsenal to improve health outcomes: gaming makes health care fun. [Health Aff (Millwood). 2009;28(5):w842-8 (published online 4 August 2009; 10.1377/hlthaff.28.5.w842)]
Key Words: Chronic Care, Consumer Issues, Health Promotion/Disease Prevention, Research And Technology, Health Information Technology
More here:
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.28.5.w842
The full article will be available till about the 18th of August, 2009 for free download.
Fifth we have:
By Selena Chavis
For The Record
Vol. 21 No. 15 P. 10
State and regional organizations hope to receive a dose of ARRA funds to boost health information exchange to the next level.
Signed, sealed, and delivered. On February 17, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) aimed at providing a boost to the U.S. economy with specific investments to increase the health information exchange (HIE) movement across the nation.
The bill allocates more than $17 billion to implement EMRs in healthcare provider settings and an additional $3 billion to improve the nationwide healthcare technology infrastructure—money that is expected to be steered toward the expansion of HIEs and regional health information organizations (RHIOs).
“The overall impact [of the bill] is the refocusing and expansion of awareness. Many more administrators are much more aware of HIE and their role in improving healthcare,” says Christina Thielst, FACHE, an industry expert and HIT consultant. “Of course, the other major benefit is that there will be funding streams. We are at the cusp of more widespread implementation … but we need everyone’s support to move forward.”
While most industry insiders acknowledge the unique opportunity presented by the ARRA funding and are optimistic about the potential, the package itself has sparked much discussion and speculation about how best to move forward. In response to concerns voiced in the industry, Mosaica Partners, a Florida-based HIE consulting firm, initiated the white paper “Leading Practices: Leveraging the Economic Stimulus Package for Health Information Exchange” to gain insight into approaches being used by various states and regions in their planning efforts.
“We talked with 40 people in 30 different states. We felt the information was very valuable and indicated trends within various states,” notes Mosaica Partners President Laura Kolkman, RN, MS, adding that the organization tried to highlight innovative approaches that showed promise for success. “This is all brand new. We could not identify best practices, as that applies to initiatives that have been proven successful time and time again over a specified period. We instead called them ‘leading practices.’”
The white paper is intended to generate early discussion to avoid what some in the industry fear may turn into waste. “We talk a lot about planning because it is lack of planning that usually contributes to waste,” Kolkman explains. “The waste—there’s going to be some because it [the stimulus package] is so huge.”
Thielst echoes Kolkman’s position, pointing out that “the biggest concern is that providers will jump into implementation before they are ready.
“There’s a lot of preparation that has to go into getting an organization ready,” she adds. “My fear is that we will use up the money and not have much to show for it.”
Charlie Jarvis, assistant vice president of healthcare industry services and government relations for NextGen Healthcare, points out that it will be easy for organizations to get caught up in the movement’s technology aspect and potentially miss the broader picture. “Choosing the right technology is extremely important … but it’s just as important to choose the right partners going forward,” he says.
Much more here:
http://fortherecordmag.com/archives/080309p10.shtml
The report is found here:
Sixth we have:
Report: ARRA to Hike Hardware Sales
HDM Breaking News, August 5, 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act should spur higher sales of hardware as well as software applications, according to a new report from Kalorama Information, a New York-based life sciences research firm.
Hardware sales represent about 23% of annual health care computer sales, report authors estimate. They expect hardware sales will grow at a faster pace than I.T. spending as a whole in the near term--about 10.7% annually through 2013.
More detail here:
The 125-page report, "Healthcare Computer System Markets and Trends in HIT Buying," is available for $3,500 at kaloramainformation.com/Healthcare-Computer-System-2303131/.
Hardly a surprise. I am not sure how much all the details are worth however!
Second last we have:
10 'Basic Patient Safety Reforms' to Save 85,000 Lives, $35 Billion
John Commins, for HealthLeaders Media, August 7, 2009
The consumer activist group Public Citizen says it has 10 basic patient safety reforms that could save 85,000 lives and $35 billion annually.
The report "Back to Basics," analyzes the results of several studies of treatment protocols for chronically recurring, avoidable medical errors. Most of the reforms in Public Citizen's report involve fundamentals as simple as practitioners consistently washing their hands, sufficiently tending to patients to prevent bed sores, and following simple safety checklists to prevent infections and complications stemming from operations.
The financial toll of failing to follow accepted safety procedures is astounding, PC says. Severe pressure ulcers cost an average of $70,000 apiece to treat. A catheter infection costs $45,000. Collectively, avoidable surgical errors cost an estimated $20 billion a year, bed sores $11 billion, and preventable adverse drug reactions $3.5 billion.
"There are many incentives to order expensive tests and procedures and too few rewards for providing basic, sensible care," says David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. "As the largest investor in the nation's healthcare system, the federal government should ensure that fulfilling basic patient safety standards is a condition of receiving federal reimbursements."
Much more here:
The link to the report is in the text. Important reading.
Lastly we have:
The Healthcare Information Technology (HIT) Market is Poised for Growth
by Lou Agosta
Originally published August 6, 2009
Market Overview
The healthcare information technology (HIT) software market is poised for dramatic growth. Drivers include built up demand for upgrades in legacy systems that have been neglected for years, government incentives for action in implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) system (and penalties for non action), gaps in addressing demand such as the need for small-scale systems to support physician practices of five or fewer doctors, and the ability to do what software does best – automate workflow and coordination of care through scheduling and asynchronous, parallel processing. In short, healthcare organizations will pull themselves forward in the capability maturity model for the hospital of the future by means of enhanced IT integration and functionality.
This research estimates the current market for hospital information systems (HISs) to be some $307 million and growing at a 20% rate, whereas the market for physician practice management is $102 million and growing at 25%. Combined, the two markets will reach $1.38 billion by 2014 and surpass $2 billion by 2015.
On the flip side, market risks and inhibitors are substantial. Open source looms as a major disruptor in the positive sense of driving innovation and reengineering rather than direct software revenues (since the software itself is “free”). The end result will benefit end user enterprises as they are able to acquire more technology for the dollar. Meanwhile, Congressional legislation is a blunt instrument and market uncertainty is being amplified by lack of clarity as to the rules of engagement. Yes, EMRs are being implemented, but interoperability, workable security and usability remain afterthoughts in too many cases. Attention to these by software providers, implementers and users alike is not gold plating and will be rewarded with the cost saving and productivity improvements that are the promise of HIT.
Vastly more here :
http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/11085
A useful overview of the US Health IT Marketplace
Enough goodies for one week!
Enjoy!
David.
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