Technology is Good- But, It Needs To Work

I was in a hospital last year to be with my father-in-law when I noticed something that seemed a little unusual to me. The doctors had nurses following them around with a laptop mounted on a wheeled cart. They were entering information as the doctors dictated and moved from patient to patient. The process looked awkward and actually looked a little silly to me- but what did I know?

I asked a nurse what was going on, and she said it was the hospitals initiative to improve efficiency and to get more of their processes automated and electronic. It still seemed foolish to me to use high-price staff to follow a doctor around simply for data entry, but I assumed there was more to it than I was aware of.

I guess not. The hospital discontinued the idea a few weeks later.

The May 4 issue of Business Week has an interesting article about the coming boom in the technology side of health care that is anticipated due to the pressure the industry will be under from a number of stakeholders to get more efficient.

The article, "The Dubious Promise of Digital Medicine" mainly talks about some of the horror stories and the expenses hospitals and providers have already incurred when trying to match incompatible processes and business models to standardized technology. It's already been expensive and in some cases has been dangerous.

There is no doubt that the health care system needs to get better organized and have the systems in place to be able to communicate more effectively than it does today. But, we're afraid that all of the money that's being thrown at the cause is clouding the intent of what it's all about in the first place.

Why don't we start with those delivering the care and the patient when designing and developing these systems? Once again, the fragmented system we have today has resulted in an onslaught of technology development- with very few concepts able to cross-communicate with other stakeholders. And, cross-communication is going to be required. We're designing systems from a "corporate perspective" rather than a "health care perspective". We need to start building these things with an idea of what is good for the patient- as opposed to simply focusing only on the bottom-line.

Newt Gingerich (who created the Center for Health Transformation) stated, "Some of the vendors are more aware of the potential for dramatic change. Others are so busy trying to make this quarter's sales goal that they're not doing much strategic thinking."

We have an opportunity to do some great things in transforming the communication methods in our health care system today. Let's hope that we don't lose sight of the fact it is still the relationship and communication between the patient and provider that will have the biggest influence in facilitating the changes we need to make- and let's hope we don't take "cookbook medicine" to a new level and sacrifice quality- for the sake of "this quarter's sales goals".