Good quote on health IT from Kaiser Permanente president and CEO George Halvorson: “The goal is the care [...] The technology is a tool. [...] A lot of people put medical records in place but don't have a goal, don't have a particular strategy to use them, and if you just put the medical record in place and don't use it for anything, care doesn't get better.”
Halvorson also refers to process improvement guru Edward Deming, saying that savings follow from improvement activity, while targeting savings instead of improvement usually leads to reduced quality. So, it's better to focus on reducing the incidence of broken bones among seniors than on reducing the cost of broken bones. This way, care will be improved and savings made.
I'd develop the argument somewhat. The healthcare sector is becoming increasingly complex and collaborative. This means that medical records have to serve many goals throughout the collaborating community. A good standards process can ensure that record structures are designed to serve all the goals of the sponsoring community. In fact, good standards can even help to enable new goals by providing enhanced clarity over the nature and structure of the information at play in the domain. Standards are a powerful way of promoting business strategy over short-term, silo thinking.
Comments