Healthcare IT News - March 2009 - (Page 9) www.HealthcareITNews.com March 2009 ■ Healthcare IT News O M M N T R Y informed consent key THE ABILITY TO MINE and analyze important information improves patient treatment significantly. Consider Florida’s BayCare Hospital: Its systems, which enable clinicals to analyze treatment for suspected coronary victims, reduced the time it takes to diagnose and process a heart patient by 20 minutes – long enough to save numerous lives. Despite such remarkable progress, many critical aspects of health management remain complicated – which leads to serious mistakes. Fortunately, strategic application of healthcare business intelligence (HBI) – for innovation, new procedures, knowledge transfer, data sharing, etc. – minimizes mistakes while enabling extraordinary enhancements. Most healthcare providers have four goals: They need to provide optimum care delivery; develop a reliable financial baseline; employ rigorous business planning; and increase market share. Healthcare managers who make daily decisions to achieve these goals rely on all forms of patient- and healthcare-related data, which must be managed and analyzed. Enter HBI. In fact, “pay-for-perand accurate information delivery. Data Integration – Relevant data sources are usually dispersed across hospitals, requiring a formal, enterpriseoriented approach to data integration. Ad hoc approaches lack the scale and flexibility for analytics. Analytics – CEOs need analytics to identify the most preferred service offerings in each of a group’s hospitals. CFOs need breakdowns on resource consumption. Data warehouses that accommodate both are incredibly valuable. Information Delivery – Relevant reports are essential. Hartford Hospital, for example, creates more than 150 email reports, which administrators and financial analysts access easily. The hospital incorporates other data into its system – including a time-tracking and scheduling application and clinical data. The centralized information center – which features single sign-on—allows people to access all the data they need, clinical or financial. Prasad dINdIgal VP, Satyam Healthcare Practice Newsmaker iNterview athenahealth posted $35.4 million in thirdquarter sales, a 35 percent gain over the same period in 2007. The company’s net income for the third quarter was $3.7 million, compared to $500,000 in the same period last year. What do you credit for this success given the tough economic times? athenahealth continues to experience tremendous growth of our national physician network as we saw a 50 percent gain in the number of providers using Jonathan our services over the same period a year ago in the third quarter. We also updatBush ed investors at our Investor Summit in CeO, president, December that we are expanding our chairman of five-year growth targets. athenahealth, which he athenahealth is completely Web-based co-founded in 1997 and because we centrally-host our platraised more than $10m form, athenaNet, and handle all of the in venture capital in work associated with getting the doctor 2000 paid or updating their medial chart, we Launched successful are a source of new capital, not a drain iPO in 2007 on the doctor during a time when the medical reimbursement and economic climate is quite challenging. This is in stark contrast to traditional software-only EHR vendors that sell only software and IT. What has been athenahealth’s biggest success so far? Our corporate culture is our single greatest asset and achievement. As a service provider we are extremely close to our clients and in order to fulfill our mission to be medical groups most trusted business service, we need to have a culture that promotes continuous teaching, learning and transparency. What is your next big opportunity? We made our first acquisition in 2008 in purchasing the assets of MedicalMessaging.net, a provider of patient messaging services to medical groups. We are currently selling a unique service called ReminderCall, which is an automated system for managing appointment confirmations and reminders that effectively reduce no-shows, increases arrival rates, and improves bottom-line revenue for medical groups. This year, we plan to launch a more comprehensive patient communication service, athenaCommunicator, which will look to bring the same level busH see page 10 BenefIts of HBI “ many critical aspects of health management remain complicated.” formance” initiatives, increasingly popular among health authorities, have generated significant HBI investment. With HBI, they provide quality, inexpensive healthcare while maintaining business differentiation. Integrated InformatIon Here’s how it works: To improve quality, support service standards, reduce costs or develop competitive strategies, large, geographically dispersed health systems need information about how care is delivered across multiple fronts. These systems collate raw data from various sources, and then BI solutions turn it into meaningful, controlled and safe information. The systems also enable data integration, application of sophisticated analytics HBI enables healthcare organizations to gather their data in a single repository and compare it across systems, dramatically improving care. Additionally, strategic, mature HBI solutions are easily implemented and relieve significant manual data collection burdens. Technically, faster data gathering and meaningful analytical report production facilitate decision support and operational management, while seamless integration and pre-data integration efforts cleanse data. From a business perspective, executives gain more than information; they receive analytical reports based on data gathered from different sources. Moreover, outcome analytics can monitor disease protocols, and additional data scrutiny can determine which protocols meet safety and efficiency parameters. Further, performance and quality improve by segregating main subject areas into key performance indicators (KPIs). Most importantly, patients benefit. They receive more accurate diagnoses, and prescription drug- and hospital care-related errors are reduced considerably. HBI enables them to enjoy longer, healthier, disease-free lives. More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: DINDIGaL 0309 ● leTTers Continued from page 8 readers worry about stimulus waste Yes “As documented by the National Research Council report released on January 9, 2009, any government or private sector stimulus money will ultimately be wasted if it is used to purchase healthcare IT products with the functionality design flaws that fall short of achieving the health care delivery and quality goals envisioned by the Institute of Medicine. For healthcare IT to create the most value, what has to change is that all HIT vendors must differentiate their products and make them more attractive to physicians and other potential customers by embracing the CCHIT-generated incentives to compete and innovate beyond the baseline certification requirements.” - Robert Coli, MD Diagnostic Information System Company These systems support clinicians in their decision making by flagging up potential adverse drug reactions. At the point that a clinician prescribes a medication to a patient, the clinical decision support checks the medication against information held in the patient’s Electronic Health Record, and generates an on-screen alert message if there are potential clinical problems. I realise that NHS Connecting for Health is addressing this issue as part of the National Programme for IT. However, there are systems available today which, if introduced into more hospitals, could further reduce the number of medication errors and thereby improve patient safety. ■ – David Flavell President, First DataBank International More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: Letters 0309 news “Broad industry experience shows just throwing in more technology always makes existing problems worse. What’s needed is to first fix the processes, then selectively and prudently add technology.” – Mark Diehl “Government does not have qualified healthcare professionnals or seasoned individuals that know how to execute such a plan. It is all blue sky. Well laid out plans need to be put in place quickly then seamlessly executed.” – S.Green Ingenix Consulting EDITOR’S NOTE: There were no comments from readers who voted “no.” HealtHcare It newsmonItor Q 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% Do you think the $20 billion for healthcare it in the government’s stimulus plan could be wasted? mONitOr 7% 21% Yes no ● To take future surveys, subscribe to our enewsletter, HealthcareITNewsWeek, or visit us daily on the Web at HealthcareITNews.com. http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.MedicalMessaging.net http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/informed-consent-key-0 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/new-standard-dead-arrival-0
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