Reducing Healthcare Costs Electronically

I was watching the NBC Nightly News last night as they continued their coverage of the earthquake in Haiti.  As I’m sure you’ve seen, the massive damage from the quake injured so many people that Haiti’s medical community was quickly overwhelmed.  Doctors and medical teams from all over the world have been flying in to try to help.

One of the medical teams that was mentioned in the news segment I was watching was a team from Israel.  What made them unique was their use of technology to totally document, diagnose, treat, and follow up with the people they were treating.

When a person first entered their medical “complex ” (actually, a series of tents), they were photographed with a digital camera.  All vital signs were entered into a computer.  All X-rays, lab tests, and the results of other diagnostic tests were digitized and included in the patients electronic file.

If the medical team needed to consult with outside specialists located back in Israel, they could easily transmit the electronic records and allow the specialists – thousands of miles away – to examine the same X-rays and test results, basically in real-time.  The reporter went on to say that this was “the new model” for emergency medical response.

My first thought was a sarcastic, “No s*** Sherlock, using digital technology to improve health care.  What a concept!”  After all, it’s 2010 for God’s sake.  It’s not like computers or the Internet are some “new-fangled thang” that might not catch on.  It’s way past time the American Health Care industry got on board.

The US Has Fallen Behind

I occasionally tune into “talk radio” and listen to Rush or Hannity, since they seem to be the only ones on most of the time.   One of the comments that I consistently hear from them is that “the US has the best health care system in the world.”  Sorry but that’s not true.

The study quoted most often was one performed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2000.  It looked at the state of health care in 191 countries in a variety of ways including “financial fairness.”  The US comes in 37th with France and Italy taking the number 1 and 2 spots respectively.

Now, I’d be the first to agree with the large numbers (including Rush and Hannity) that point out that the WHO study is very, very flawed.  But even if the US ranking was to improve by 50% to say, 18, it’s STILL not even in the Top 10.

So OK.  Let’s throw out the WHO study.  I live in Houston, TX, which has one of the best medical centers, especially for cancer treatment, in the US.  There are hospitals here that used to have entire floors of “luxury suites” designed for treating visiting Heads of State as well as the occasional Saudi Prince.  These are the types of people that can travel anywhere in the world for medical treatment.  Know what?  Many hospitals have closed these rooms down or have converted them to other uses.  The super rich are not coming to Houston, or the US for that matter, any more.  They’re seeking medical treatment elsewhere in the world.

No matter how you slice it, no matter what study you believe or what study you toss out, the end result is pretty much the same:  the US has fallen behind in the quality of our health care.

The World’s Largest and Most Inefficient

In a 2005 article in “Health Affairs” magazine, the authors of an article titled, “Can Electronic Medical Record Systems Transform Health Care? Potential Health Benefits, Savings, And Costs” (Yeah, I know, medical articles never have short titles…) stated that:

The U.S. health care industry is arguably the world’s largest, most inefficient information enterprise. However, although health absorbs more than $1.7 trillion per year—twice the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average—premature mortality in the United States is much higher than OECD averages.  Most medical records are still stored on paper, which means that they cannot be used to coordinate care, routinely measure quality, or reduce medical errors.  Also, consumers generally lack the information they need about costs or quality to make informed decisions about their care.

Did you catch the number?  $1.7 Trillion with a capital “T.”  That’s a number so huge, it doesn’t even register with most people.  One example from a CNN news story stated that, if you had started spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spend a trillion dollars by the time 2010 had rolled around (see video below).

Behind the Technology Curve

The US is home to Silicon Valley and MIT and a host of other organizations and/or areas at the vanguard of technology research.  Computers and the Internet were “invented” here.  We should have the home field advantage in the use of technology to improve health care.  Yet only about 15-20% of doctors offices and only about 20-25% of hospitals have any type of electronic medical record systems in place.  Why is that?

If 90% of applicable facilities adopted electronic record keeping, it’s estimated that the potential efficiency savings for both inpatient and outpatient care could average more than $77 billion per year with most of the largest savings coming from reducing hospital lengths-of-stay, nurses’ administrative time, drug usage in hospitals, and drug and radiology usage in the outpatient setting.

This number does not even begin to estimate the savings in the number of lawsuits that would be prevented.

So Why Not?

So why hasn’t the medical industry implemented this the way other industries have?  I can log onto my banking account and see scanned in copies of every check I’ve ever written, including my water bill from 3 years ago.  Why can’t I do the same with my blood tests, prescriptions, and physical exams?

There are a lot of things wrong with the Health Care Bills that are currently making their ways through the House and Senate but electronic record keeping is one thing that should be taking place no matter how the other portions of the bill turn out.  To me, this is the only “no brainer” part that I can readily understand and easily see the impact of.

Hopefully, you do to.

Hiram

Technorati Tags: medical records, transcripts, electronic record keeping, hospital, doctor, patient, nurse, drugs, physician, technology, health care

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