Can technology lower health care costs? Yes, says Mindy Tucker Fletcher and she wants you to think West Wireless Health Institute and San Diego when you say that.
Michael Porter, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, proposes "A Strategy For Health Care Reform - Toward A Value-Based System." His proposals are fundamental, lucid and right-on, meaning they're sure to be opposed by some parties to the debate, the so-called "Yes, but..." crowd. Most important, in my opinion, is this: "... electronic medical records will enable value improvement, but only if they support integrated care and outcome measurement. Simply automating current delivery practices will be a hugely expensive exercise in futility. Among our highest near-term priorities is to finalize and then continuously update health information technology (HIT) standards that include precise data definitions (for diagnoses and treatments, for example), an architecture for aggregating data for each patient over time and across providers, and protocols for seamless communication among systems. "Finally, consumers must become much mor...
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Why do you think there's zero correlation?
I'd attribute it to hospitals being relatively poor buyers, implementers and users of all things IT. And, of course, to a raft of vendors who like it that way.