Healthcare is reliant upon data, and as clinical integration becomes top of mind for healthcare executives, data becomes even more important than ever.
At the Becker's Hospital Review 6th Annual Meeting, Rosemary Plorin, president of Lovell Communications, moderated a panel discussing how to use health IT to improve clinical integration.
Clinical integration is still a developing presence in healthcare, though it is rapidly growing. "It's still in its baby stages," Ms. Plorin said. "I'm not sure anyone knows what its teenage or adolescent years will look like, but we're getting there."
What we do know, according to the panelists, is that clinical integration depends heavily on data. Ms. Plorin asked the panelists whether the industry is equipped to "maximize this treasure trove" of data.
Craig Richardville, senior vice president and CIO of Charlotte, N.C.-based Carolinas HealthCare System said even though we are collecting huge amounts of data, it isn't enough.
"In clinically integrated networks, it's just a small fraction of the information we need on our patients and our populations," Mr. Richardville said. "It's changing behavior that we need to look at," making data collection as routine as when people wake up in the morning and check email. "If we want to change the behavior of people, we have to get them to see the value of being engaged and the value we can present back to them as a healthcare system."
Dan Kinsella, executive vice president and CIO of the West Region of Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine said in the panel that consumer-devices offer a way to engage with patients outside the hospital.
"We only spend 5 percent of our natural lives in any engaged process with healthcare providers, so how do you engage in a meaningful way the other 95 percent of the time?" Mr. Kinsella said, which he added is possible through patient portals and "accidental touchpoints" by making data operable within the electronic record.
However, even if the industry is collecting and aggregating data, hospitals and health systems are ill-equipped to handle and analyze the data, according to Mary Anne Leach, senior vice president and CIO of Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora.
"We're wholly unprepared," Ms. Leach said. "I don't think we have enough data scientists. We're not investing in analytics enough, we don't know what to do with all that Fitbit data and all that patient-generated biometric data, what are we going to do with that?"
Clinical integration requires equal participation from all parties. Adam Klass, chief technology officer, said clinical integration requires vendors and providers to meet in the middle of the road.
"We need to have an organization that's willing to be updated continually," Mr. Klass said. "We can only do so much on our side as a vendor."
More articles on health IT:
5 indicators of a fully integrated IT system
Life of a healthcare CIO: UnityPoint Health's Joy Grosser
Sentara to share EHR with DOD