Is E- Your Friend or Your Enemy?

Aug 25
08:33

2013

sammy smith

sammy smith

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With increased stress on electronization of records, care and delivery in the US healthcare domain, there has been a paradigm shift of focus on transferring patient data and using it smartly for better delivery and compliance in healthcare.

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Now,Is E- Your Friend or Your Enemy? Articles the need of the hour is to find an effective solution that not only collates data and presents it in a usable format but also provides analytics and deep level analysis of the shared data. While this is a primary agenda for several care delivery agencies, it is marred by one of the basest challenges healthcare has been wrestling with since decades.
It is correct that care delivery agencies have been able to determine what is best for smooth functioning of the data they have been collecting for years, customized healthcare IT solutions. However, the area where they have been looking for better answers is availability of quality solutions. Taking an example of a recent spate of issues faced MyWay, a software solution meant to capture and use EHR data, and the impact on the whole North Carolina Health Information Exchange, it can be said for certain that choosing the right IT solution that complies to acts and protocols determined by the US government is an imperative and arduous task.
 
While complying with the requirements of the government, speeding up the whole process and ensuring adequate delivery of care, the chances of avoiding these pitfalls decrease considerably. To mitigate this chance, some guidelines can be established. These guidelines, when followed to the book, might help caregivers avoid the predicament of enrolling a dilapidated IT system and wasting their precious funds which can be much better utilized elsewhere. 

The first golden rule of enrolling an IT provider with your system is checking on the compliance level. The problem faced by MyWay from AllScripts was that of compliance with government policies, and the failure of several test cases on those lines. This led to the disruption of the very roots of the N.C. system and establishment of a situation to be wary of. The second golden rule is to have a solution that not only captures patient data but also lets you play around with it in a meaningful manner. The future of caregiving lies in prediction on the basis of previous patterns, a solution that is ready for this is an investment into the future.

Other than these two golden rules, cost calculation and justification should serve as the third pillar for decision making. A solution can either follow a one-time payment model or can be a recurring cost in the long run. A one-time payment model binds you to a vendor for a set period of time while the recurring cost model starts out low and lets you scale up or down, as required. A one-time payment model is a riskier proposition, given the changing face of US healthcare and a huge margin for error. On the other hand, the recurring cost model lets you make a small investment in the beginning and allows you to increase or decrease your expenditure in the long run, thus giving you the freedom to align your investments with your returns efficiently. 

These three signposts, or pillars, will serve as the epitome of decision making while enrolling an IT vendor for getting you up and running. These pillars will draw the line between friendship and enmity with electronization, this decade’s buzzword in healthcare domain. These signposts will affirm a cost efficient, capable model for your healthcare services, if employed deftly, or will lead you to impending casualty, which could be revenue losses, lackluster performance, deteriorating faith in the market etc. Best plan of action would be to benchmark these signposts according to the needs of your business and use them for finding an IT vendor that can be knitted with your values and agendas closely.