Tuesday is the first day of major programming at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society's 2012 Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, but multiple symposia drew hundreds of attendees to preconference events Monday.
A crowd of 450 physician informaticists at the physicians' symposium, held in collaboration with the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems, heard a keynote speech on the future of healthcare IT from John Glaser, former CIO of 12-hospital Partners HealthCare System, Boston, and the CEO of the health services business unit at Siemens.
In the past, the focus of development in electronic health-record systems has been on recording, retrieving and analyzing healthcare transactions—for example, documenting patient encounters and writing prescriptions. Less attention was paid to developing clinical decision-support tools that could, among other functions, evaluate the appropriateness of physician orders and send health maintenance reminders or medication error alerts.
However, a major shift in EHR functionality—from offering primarily transaction support to offering more-intelligent support that can power the use of data analysis to help find variation in costs and report and evaluate quality measures—is taking place, Glaser said.
“There's going to be a profound change in the way care is paid for in this country” that will require a “multi-faceted array” of healthcare information capabilities, Glaser said. “They all add up to an effort to bring accountability to care.”
The new paradigm will require providers to “extend” the EHR to support collaboration, a shared work list and the use of social media. It will enable personalized care, “remind you that certain processes aren't working,” help manage populations, and provide guideline adherence assessments and financial optimization analysis, he said. And, Glaser said, it will be disruptive.
“There is no greater disruption to healthcare than changing the payment model,” he said.
The effective use of “intelligence” requires a supportive context, incentives, a good fit with work flow and good design, Glaser said. Curating and managing this ever-expanding and evolving base of clinical knowledge as well as keeping software applications, organizations and providers up to date will be a profound challenge, unlike any ever faced before by the healthcare industry, Glaser stated.
Plus, he said, “There's also no guarantee that this will work.”
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