3t Executive Healthcare Forum on Interconnectedness

On October 3^rd, 2012, we had the privilege of hosting another 3t Executive Healthcare Forum.  The topic was “Healthcare Interconnectedness: We are all alone in this together.”  The audience of 100 included distinguished leaders in the healthcare industry, including 23 Chief Executive Officers.  Our experienced panelists from across the country included:

• Dr. Larry Wolk, Chief Executive Officer of CORHIO (www.corhio.org), Colorado’s Non-Profit, state-designated health information exchange (HIE) organization.  Dr. Wolk is a practicing physician, and prior to joining CORHIO, held leadership positions at a variety of health care organizations.
• Carl Clark, M.D., Chief Executive Officer of Mental Health Center of Denver (www.mhcd.org).  Dr. Clark has served as the CEO of the Mental Health Center of Denver since 2000.  Dr. Clark is a nationally-recognized community mental health leader and has challenged the Mental Health Center of Denver to be the Center of Excellence with the best mental health services in the country.
• Wayne Guerra, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer & Co-Founder of iTriage (www.itriagehealth.com).  Dr. Guerra has more than 20 years of excellence in clinical and academic emergency medicine and 15 years experience in emergency practice management, hospital-based emergency department management, third-payer contracting, hospital and physician professional service contracting, quality assurance, and risk management.
• Nancy Wollen, Senior Vice President of Operations at Kaiser Permanente Colorado (www.kp.org).  In her role, Wollen is responsible for developing and implementing regional strategies to position the delivery system for long-term success, in partnership with physician and health plan leadership.

With the combined years of knowledge and experience of the panelists, we posed the question, "How are we all connected in healthcare?”  The question sparked a lively and insightful discourse on a variety of topics including the growing adoption rates of technology among patients, impact of social media on healthcare, incenting clinicians to utilize integrated patient medical records, and how technology is enabling positive changes in clinician workflow and patient care.

Through active participation, and practical perspectives from the panel, audience members were able to gain insight on how to execute their own healthcare strategies.  Dr. Guerra noted, “Seventy-five million people are going to use a mobile application to access healthcare,” demonstrating the growth in the healthcare technology market.

Further discussion centered on how clinicians need to be more involved in the medical social conversation, with Dr. Clark stating, “Sixty-four percent of social media conversations on mental health consisted of requests for help and the vast majority of treatment recommendations were not based in medical science.”  He advocated for clinicians becoming more engaged in social channels in order to provide better patient outcomes.

This led to a dialogue on how healthcare is evolving from a “fee-for-service” based system to a “patient-centric” model.  Healthcare will need to be more wellness focused, with insurance providers migrating towards higher reimbursements for prevention care.  Additionally, patients will demand to be more involved in their own health, and clinicians will need to provide integrated medical records as a result.

I couldn’t agree more.  As a company, 3t Systems has been involved in the transformation of healthcare for over a decade.  We helped create the first integrated medical record system in Colorado, partnering with Northern Colorado Health Alliance on integrating over 13 independent physician practices spanning physical, dental, mental, and substance abuse clinics.  We have always been, and continue to be, dedicated to revolutionizing healthcare through innovative technology.

To join the discussion and be involved in future events, please request to join the 3t Executive Healthcare Forum or follow @3tSystemsIT on Twitter.

Healthcare IT - Are we missing the point completely?

I speak to clients on a weekly basis and hear a recurring theme; IT has become more complex but less useful. While this is not necessarily new news, it’s still confounding that few are talking about it let alone doing something about it. Instead, we see the same themes over and over in the barrage of industry newsletters – compliance, regulation, meaningful use, EHR, measurable outcomes, etc. Granted most of the writers and publications have their own agenda, but I thought I could shed some new light on a relevant topic.

 

The demographics of our physician population and the recent legislative changes suggest a looming shortage of physicians to meet the future needs. Quality of care is seen as the winner with continuing EHR adoption. While we implement increasingly complex systems in hospital systems and physician practices, we actually end up increasing the time spent on interacting with technology and reducing the time available with patients. Industry statistics suggest that for every 12 minutes spent with a patient, 6 minutes are needed to interact with technology. So, we will have less time for patients receiving care directly from physicians. It looks like we are addressing the challenge of collecting data for future analysis and efficiency, but ignoring patient need for high-touch, and high quality care.

 

So what to do about it? Let's try to break down those 6 minutes. Some of that time is accessing and interacting with legitimate documentation and diagnostic information to enable quality care. It's typically what happens to access systems that wastes a lot of time – i.e., securely logging in with multi factor authentication, launching the application, drilling into the application and bringing up the patient record, logging out and moving to the next patient. Try to do that 30 times or more in a given day with systems that are 'slow,' and it's easy to see how most of the 6 minutes may be wasted on waiting for the next mouse click and password prompt.

 

Can all of that be eliminated? Not one hundred percent, for sure. But imagine even if 1 minute was shaved off of the access time. That could mean one extra patient visit per day, or more quality time with patients. Sounds great, right?

So how do we do it? Let’s get back to the basics - figure out what you want your clinical workflow to be, then and only then consider the technology tools that can facilitate the efficiency you desire. In the end, it’s a balance and your job is to find the fulcrum.