Healthcare executives have been introduced to new challenges in recent years, including what can seem like an overwhelming amount of new technology and number of digital tools.
Panelists at Becker’s 5th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference, Oct. 9-12, discussed the biggest issues in health IT. The panel featured:
- William Choctaw, MD, physician surveyor for The Joint Commission.
- Patrice Weiss, MD, CMO and executive vice president of Carilion Clinic.
- Jim Jamison, co-founder and president of EvidenceCare.
Here are three takeaways:
1. A few of the top issues that are pressing in healthcare today are physician engagement, recruiting, cybersecurity, technology being dumped into the field and patient safety. Everyone is focused on improving the quality of care while decreasing costs, but it's also now becoming imperative to expand access while engaging clinicians.
2. To keep physicians and staff engaged, hospital executives must develop a positive corporate culture. With a positive company culture, staff will want to continue to work for your organization. Once you have developed your culture, it's important to hire people who fit into that culture.
3. Hospitals cannot just integrate new technology into clinicians' workflows and expect them to understand and use the tools successfully. Not all technology will be embraced. Instead, it's important to adopt tools that were built and designed by physicians. Physicians also need to champion the new technology in order to get buy-in from other staff.