Lag of Integrated IT in Healthcare
Healthcare organizations
have lagged adoption of new information technologies and infrastructure,
historically. And, HCOs have been known to evolve their IT systems from
departmental-oriented systems. As healthcare information technology
adoption accelerates, an integrated enterprise architecture becomes important,
why?
Historically healthcare organizations (HCO’s) have lagged
adoption of new information technologies due to cost of the technology, lack of
structural inconsistency in reimbursement models, as well as many other
reasons. In today’s healthcare industry what has changed from the 1960’s is we
are no longer focused solely on administrative information technology to
maximize reimbursement (Wager, Wickham, & Glaser, 2013, p. 110). Now
organizations need to focus on meaningful use of electronic health records (EHR)
to improve quality of care. Moreover, with changing reimbursement models, it
becomes clear that HCO’s need to focus on integrated information technology to
provide quality care to be reimbursed for services.
According to a study conducted in 2000 by the institute of
medicine (IOM), 44,000 to 98,000 people die yearly due to medical errors, and
from this study emerged the topic of information technology to improve patient
care (Wager, Wickham, & Glaser, 2013, p. 119). The primary issue in today’s
industry is interoperability which includes semantic, and programming issues.
Organizations try to share data that cannot be exchanged due to technical
inconsistencies. This creates a high demand for developing middle ware that
organizations can use to share data not only internally but also externally
with other healthcare organizations (Zhang, Xu, & Ewins, 2007). The
question is how can we fix this issue so that we can reduce annual deaths due
to medical errors and improve quality of care?
The starting point would be to focus on developing an
integrated enterprise architecture. Burke (2013), argues that healthcare
organizations focused on buying more software does nothing but raise cost’s.
The focus should be on leveraging the health information technology they already
have to build an enterprise architecture they can prosper from. Some of the
benefits he mentions are controlling costs, improving performance of health
outcomes, and encouraging better planning (Burke, 2013). Moreover, in
developing an enterprise architecture that is fully integrated to share data
between multiple clinical systems and administrative systems, HCO’s will
prepare themselves for reimbursement changes. If we take the new models of
payment such as bundled pricing methods, having an integrated healthcare IT
system will allow organizations such as accountable care organizations (ACO’s)
to reduce medical inconsistencies. These inconsistencies can range from
duplicate testing to preventable medical conditions. Thus this reduces the
amount of unnecessary services rendered meaning the shared costs under bundle
pricing will be maximized.
Organizations such as ACO’s will prosper greatly from an
integrated enterprise architecture. Taking into consideration the many groups
associated such as hospitals, specialties, and primary care involved in
creating an ACO. Having an integrative network will improve coordination of
care and allow the organization to prosper as a whole. Aside from system
interoperability issues, developing middleware software to integrate all
clinical and administrative systems will give an ACO a competitive edge and
allow it to thrive in a changing industry.
References:
Burke, J. (2013). Where
is enterprise architecture in healthcare. Retrieved from: http://www.informationweek.com/healthcare/leadership/where-is-enterprise-architecture-in-healthcare/d/d-id/898882
Wager, K., Wickham Lee, F., & Glaser J. (2013).
Healthcare information systems a practival approach for healthcare management
(3rd ed.). San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass
Zhang, J., Xu, W., & Ewins, D. (2007). System
interoperability study for healthcare information system with the web services.
Journal of Computer Science, (7),
515-552. Retrieved from: http://thescipub.com/PDF/jcssp.2007.515.522.pdf
