Despite national investments in electronic medical records, the cost-reducing promise of health information technology has yet to be fulfilled due to problems with system use and/or interconnectivity, according to a study by RAND Corp.
RAND Corp. is a non-profit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. RAND Health, a division of RAND Corp., is a large, independent health policy research program that focuses on healthcare costs and public health preparedness.
According to Art Kellermann, MD, the study's senior author, the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis at RAND and recently named director of RAND Health, "the failure of HIT to quickly deliver on its promise is not caused by its lack of potential, but rather because of the shortcomings in the design of the IT systems that are currently in place."
According to the Mr. Kellermann and co-author Spencer Jones, the healthcare industry needs to cohesively guide future investments in HIT. Here are a few of the suggestions they offer in the study report:
• Health information stored in one IT system must be retrievable by others, including physicians and hospitals that are part of other health systems.
• Patients should have access to their electronic health information, much as consumers now have access to their bank accounts.
• Patients should be able to view their own records and share them with healthcare providers of their choice.
• HIT systems must be engineered to aid the work of clinicians, not hinder it. Systems should be intuitive, so they can be used by busy healthcare providers without extensive training.
• Physicians and healthcare providers should be able to easily use systems across different healthcare settings.
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RAND Corp. is a non-profit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. RAND Health, a division of RAND Corp., is a large, independent health policy research program that focuses on healthcare costs and public health preparedness.
According to Art Kellermann, MD, the study's senior author, the Paul O'Neill Alcoa Chair in Policy Analysis at RAND and recently named director of RAND Health, "the failure of HIT to quickly deliver on its promise is not caused by its lack of potential, but rather because of the shortcomings in the design of the IT systems that are currently in place."
According to the Mr. Kellermann and co-author Spencer Jones, the healthcare industry needs to cohesively guide future investments in HIT. Here are a few of the suggestions they offer in the study report:
• Health information stored in one IT system must be retrievable by others, including physicians and hospitals that are part of other health systems.
• Patients should have access to their electronic health information, much as consumers now have access to their bank accounts.
• Patients should be able to view their own records and share them with healthcare providers of their choice.
• HIT systems must be engineered to aid the work of clinicians, not hinder it. Systems should be intuitive, so they can be used by busy healthcare providers without extensive training.
• Physicians and healthcare providers should be able to easily use systems across different healthcare settings.
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