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Political Issues
Predictions
Quality Control
Privacy of Infomation
Financial
Design and Workflow
Story Time
Other Goodies
Issues and Problem Determination
Physicians and other Stakeholders
Client Problem List
Quality of Care
Management
Data and Standards
Demand For Health Care
Healthcare Intelligence
Challenges
 

Index - Child Subjects

Benefits of a Healthcare Information System (HIS)

It is not the tools, but rather how you use the tools

I get a little upset when I see in articles that a particular individual/Organization has not been able to cost justify the implementation of a Healthcare Information System (HIS). This actually tells me more about that Individual and the Organization than it does the Healthcare Information System (HIS). Surveys of individuals with no or little experience in using electronic applications mean very little.  We are NOT trying to duplicate the "paper based system" or the current work flow. We are trying to make it more efficient and effective.

While it is acknowledged that clinicians may have difficulty in evaluating an individual HIS system's usability because they lack the skills, It doesn't take a genius to recognized the benefits of a HIS concept.

Return on Investments (ROI) have been low (reported) for the simple reason, Healthcare Organizations do not know how to use information.  A car is of little use to someone that does not know how to use it. It is not the technology; it is the use of the technology that is important.

The benefits/Costs of a HIS should be defined as "potential" and be evaluated under ideal conditions and be evaluated at a defined levels of usage by professionals that know what they are doing. The fact that an individual provider does not "benefits" from a HIS means nothing if that provider does not know what they are doing. However, in most cases, this may not be the fault of the Provider but rather that of the Software company selling them the Healthcare Information System (HIS).  From looking at the brochures that are available it does appear that many healthcare software vendors do not push the "real" advantages of their products in real terms.

The evaluation of a HIS requires more than just keeping data on the patient (order entry, warnings and alerts or error prevention. The healthcare organization is a business and data is require to manage this organization. Investment payoff does not begin until the data is used to define, monitor and improvement the processes of the organization. You cannot separate the delivering of the product (providing healthcare) from the business processes. They are one and the same.

    A poorly ran organization will provide bad care!

Data must be collected on every aspect of the organization and "managed." Many examples are given through this web site.

Another problem with the evaluation of any healthcare process is that there are no good measures of the benefit/cost of an individual's health. As an example, what is the cost of a medication error? How do we measure it? What if the medication errors kills the patient? There is NO clear way to do a Cost-Benefit analysis in Healthcare because there is no way to measure the benefits/costs...But...it is not necessary...a true Healthcare Professional "knows" when it is the right thing to do...

Even when a HIS system is evaluated it seems that almost never is the ability to "Analysis" patient care included as a benefit. The potential for data analysis and data mining is one of the most important benefits of the HIS. If no other benefit was listed, this one benefit would justly the cost of the HIS.

This paper will not try to be an essay on "Management" but hopefully it will give the reader ideas that they can use to "follow-up" on the suggestions made in this web site....

Groups have attempted to “Justify Electronic medical” technology based on “improved outcomes.” Identifiable outcomes are only a small part of the benefits of an Electronic medical record. (2006 HIMSS Analytics, EMR Sophistication Correlates to Hospital Quality Data)

A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute "The economics of IT and hospital performance" left out of the study Kaiser Permanente because "the business model for Kaiser makes it potentially non-representative of most US acute hospital..." Yeah...Kaiser uses the data...!!!

Pay for Performance

I certainly do not understand this. Here we have the highest paid healthcare professionals in the world (US) and we are talking about giving them more money if they do what they should be doing. Why does this sound like a conspiracy to me? There are places in the world where the healthcare professional is really underpaid. Monitoring their performance and creating an incentive can really improve healthcare but in the US?

Accounting control vs. Quality control 

There IS a difference between accounting control and quality control.

• Accounting control measures how many resources go into a project and how many resources come out of the project.
• Quality control focus on the processes that come out a project 

Finance vs. Accounting

• There IS a difference between finance and accounting

• "Downsizing" vs. "Right-sizing"

Return on Investment

The problem with estimating the return on investment of purchasing a Computer System is that most people do not know how to use the data that is collected from a system. They do not know what the benefits are. If an organization uses all the benefits of the system, there is no question that the system can pay for itself in a few years or less.

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