A decade ago, the Bush administration hired Rand Corp. scholars to research how much could be saved if the medical system ditched paper charts and went digital. The savings potential was massive, the wonks said, $81 billion a year, possibly much more.
Their study envisioned newly empowered patients taking charge of their chronic diseases with the help of seamless information technology, no longer enduring duplicative tests — or worse, mistakes — because their doctors didn’t talk to each other.
And so Congress inserted $27 billion worth of incentives into the stimulus package. Hospitals and doctors are now rewarded with millions for converting to digital so long as they prove they are making “meaningful use” of their computers and software.
Billions have been paid, but the advertised benefits clearly haven’t been realized yet. Will they ever be?
Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the former U.S. national health IT coordinator, firmly believes they can.
But right now, while health providers are going digital, most aren’t yet using data to improve how they deliver care, and how they connect with patients, he said.
“We’re halfway through digitizing, but only 5 percent of the way through changing our workflows,” he said.
Mostashari visited with The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board on Monday to discuss the early days of the health information technology era, and his belief that it’s the marriage of new technology with new wellness-oriented payment models that will eventually produce the promised gains of the nation’s health technology investment.
There have been early successes, Mostashari said. Ninety percent of prescriptions are now sent electronically between doctors and drug stores, for example.
“We know that saves lives,” Mostashari said. “The challenge is, what are you doing with this. What’s the purpose? What’s the goal?”
Mostashari aruges it’s changing payment models and smarter incentives that will really change the game.
Right now, “Only 18 percent of Florida hospitals are sharing health information with providers outside of their health system,” Mostashari said. It’s not a technology problem, it’s a business incentive problem.
“It’s not in their business interest to do it, because they don’t want to lose the patient,” he said.
He launched his new company, Aledade Inc., to set the standard.
Aledade is a nationwide accountable care organization, or ACO, that was launched in 2014. ACOs are medical providers entitled to share what they save Medicare if they can show that they’re maintaining quality and patient satisfaction.
Thanks to Aledade’s focus on data analytics and physician reminders, Mostashari’s doctors became five times more likely to give recommended preventative care to their older patients, such as annual wellness visits and vaccinations against pneumonia. Patients are encouraged to connect with their doctors through a patient portal and communicate about problems.
As Health IT coordinator, Mostashari made it his personal mission to ensure that a patient’s right to their health data was enshrined in law and regulations. As a CEO, he’s making it happen.
Back in Washington, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds itself at a crossroads.
Harried doctors and hospitals have demanded a weakening of the “meaningful use” patient-access standard. How low would it go? The agency would greenlight stimulus payments to hospitals so long as a single patient — just one — successfully looked at his or her digital medical record. The existing standard is an already low 5 percent.
That would pretty well wipe out any compelling business reason for tech companies to create consumer-focused patient portals.
Consumers have only a few more days to comment on CMS’ plan to relax the consumer-access standard. To add your voice, go to www.regulations.gov and search on document number 2015-08514 by Monday June 15.
View the original content and more from this author here: http://ift.tt/1GjvvtF
from health IT caucus http://ift.tt/1GjvvtI
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment