Until the physicists look at the promise of 'health IT', I remain skeptical of pronouncements of billions to be saved.
Ever since Hillary held up a form years ago and promised that billions could be saved merely 'from having a single claim form', the notion that electronic records and more might be a holy grail driving billions out of health industry costs has been ... on the back of my mind.
The fundamental assumption behind Health IT appears to be that the current system is disorganized relative to some goal, rather than in need of having repetitive tasks automated, for example.
APPLICATION MIS-SPECIFICATION?
Most of the inefficiency one reads about in popular literature centers around the notion of automated data collection. In particular, some way for disparate providers to somehow attach a standardized medical history to each patient. Yet, is what doctors do able to be 'standardized' at some level sufficient to all needs? Probably not, right? Might one just end up creating a need for more specialized people who 'know all the codes' to enter?
What's more, it's not clear (to me) that major providers, like hospitals, don't already have fairly sophisticated IT creating a mountain of data, even if it goes into billing, insurance, and utilization statistics, not directly into ... 'health management', 'study', or 'interoperability'.
Last, because of the legal nature of the insurance industry, it is not ripe for standardization, correct?
Ears open, but ...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Is "Health IT" a Cost Holy Grail?
