Healthcare IT News - August 2007 - (Page 8)

Healthcare IT News ■ August 2007 industry news www.HealthcareITNews.com Research shows It could save lives of patients with diabetes By FreD BazzolI, Contributing Editor BOStON – Implementing IT strategies to manage diabetes and keep better track of patients could save thousands of lives, new research from the Center for Information Technology Leadership shows. However, only one of those technologies – electronic diabetes registries – offered the potential to provide savings that would produce a positive return on investment. Other adaptations of IT would end up costing far more than the savings they would produce, CITL’s study concluded. The report, by the Boston-based not-for-profit research organization, provides a sobering assessment of how much advanced technology can reduce healthcare costs. The CITL research also indicated that market inefficiencies still needed to be addressed. The study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and supported by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, is based on model projections and aided by literature reviews, expert assessments and market research. “At the national level, electronic diabetes registries are the only form of information technologyenabled diabetes management we found to be cost-beneficial when adopted for all patients savings of $14.5 billion, with Type 2 diabetes,” said compared with total costs Blackford Middleton, MD, of $6.1 billion, for a posiCITL’s chairman. “Costs are tive return of nearly $8.4 a major factor in realizing billion. Registries, which value from ITDM, and we provide reminders about need to find the means to care to both providers and lower the costs of these IT- Blackford patients, and provide other Middleton, MD enabled interventions.” information as needed, also Over 10 years of full implemen- would reduce diabetes-related tation for provider-based diabetes mortality by 710,000 over the 10registries, CITL estimates total year span, CITL estimates. “The implication is that if registries are effective in improving the care of patients with diabetes and produce savings, then we should look toward policies to get this into place,” said Doug Johnston, CITL’s executive director. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: DIaBeteS 0807 ● veTeraNs Continued from page 1 responsibility for awarding benefits. The commission also called for the VA and the Pentagon to build an e-benefits Web site that would give service members and physicians access to confidential medical information as injured soldiers moved from facility to facility for treatment. The panel said the cost of implementing all 35 recommendations would be $500 million a year for now and as much as $1 billion in future years. The report acknowledged “excellent” medical care if and when the patient was able to navigate the system to receive it. “While numerous aspects of U.S. medical care are excellent, problems in coordination and continuity of care are common,” the report said. “Our overall health system is oriented to acute care, not longterm rehabilitation.” President Bush, who has been pushing for an electronic medical record for every citizen by 2014, said the panel’s suggestions were “interesting and important.” “We owe our wounded soldiers the very best care, and the very best benefits, and the very easiest to understand system,” Bush said. “And so they took a very interesting approach. They took the perspective from the patient, as the patient had to work his way through the hospitals and bureaucracies. And they‘ve come up with some very interesting and important suggestions.” The president later told reporters he instructed the VA and Department of Defense secretaries “to take them seriously, and to implement them, so that we can say with certainty that any soldier who has been hurt will get the best possible care and treatment that this government can offer.” ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: veteraNS 0807 e ● Connect: MIe 0807 ● http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7510 http://www.mieweb.com http://www.mieweb.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=7544 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=7557

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - August 2007

Contents AHIC Redux IT Saving Lives IT, Wal-Mart Style OR Workflow Counting on Quality PHR Position Tapping Talent Slimming Down E-Prescribing Claims Processing

Healthcare IT News - August 2007

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