Healthcare Technology Featured Article

September 07, 2012

IOM Report: Technology Big Piece of the Puzzle for Healthcare Innovation and Improvement


Despite all the recent advances in science and technology, the healthcare system is still plagued by inefficiency, high costs and poor quality, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said in a report released Thursday. In the 382-page report, an 18-member expert panel urged providers to create a way to make information more accessible, engage patients and their families and make care more equitable.

How? Increase adoption of health information technology and connectivity, the use of new payment models and re-engineer healthcare systems.

Healthcare is crying out for technology, the report said.“Missed opportunities for better healthcare have real human and economic impacts,” the committee said in the report. If the care in every state were of the quality delivered by the highest-performing state, an estimated 75,000 fewer deaths would have occurred across the country in 2005. Current waste diverts resources from productive use, resulting in an estimated $750 billion loss in 2009.

Poorly designed systems, lack of information at the point of care and an entrenched culture have held back large-scale improvement, the committee said.

Elie Geisler noted in 2008 that healthcare in the 21st century was moving from provider-centered to patient-centered, from adversarial government regulation to collaborative regulation. And here’s where information technology came in –computerized physician order entry to reduce medication errors by 80 percent; improvements in diagnosis and treatment, and, of course, telehealth and telemedicine, to monitor chronic diseases and provide access to care.

“Available knowledge is too rarely applied to improve the care experience, and information generated by the care experience is too rarely gathered to improve the knowledge available,” the report said. “The traditional systems for transmitting new knowledge—the ways clinicians are educated, deployed, rewarded, and updated—can no longer keep pace with scientific advances. If unaddressed, the current shortfalls in the performance of the nation's healthcare system will deepen on both quality and cost dimensions, challenging the well-being of Americans now and potentially far into the future.” But here’s the good news. All of the necessary “pieces of the puzzle” for healthcare transformation are there, said Dr. Craig Jones, director of the Vermont Blueprint for Health, a Burlington-based initiative that targets chronic disease, in the report. He said the healthcare system just needs to pull it all together, which admittedly will take time, but wheels are turning and with the advent of health information exchanges and accountable care organizations, quality of care will improve while costs will go down.




Edited by Brooke Neuman
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