How to save $40 billion in health care: implement health IT in hospitals
Electronic health records (EHRs) broaden access to patient data and provide the platform for pushing evidence-based decision support to clinicians at the point-of-care. This promotes optimal care for patients, reduces medical errors, optimizes the use of labor, reduces duplication of tests, and by the way, improves patient outcomes. When done in aggregate across all health providers, a team from McKinsey estimates that $40 billion of costs could be saved in the U.S. health system. Reforming hospitals with IT investment in the McKinsey Quarterly talks about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act’s (ARRA) $20+ billion worth of stimulus funding under the HITECH Act
Health reform = meaningful use among health executives
Meeting meaningful use for inpatient EHRs is the top priority among the many challenges health executives face when considering how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will impact their organizations. Overall, 2 in 3 health execs place MU for inpatient EHRs as the “highest priority;” among health IT executives, the proportion citing this as the highest priority is 84%. The second-most pressing PPACA priority for health executives is preparing for new models of payment, cited by 17% of health execs overall, and 31% of non-IT executives. CSC surveyed health executives in July to gauge their temperatures on several PPACA line-items including
Hospital marketing and Mad Men: national brands go direct-to-consumer
This week’s issue of Advertising Age magazine dated June 28, 2010, includes cover stories about fast food advertising buoying cable TV revenues, car companies changing ad agencies, the Cannes advertising festival focusing on creativity and ROI, and…hospitals and health reform? Why do hospitals and health reform appear on the cover page of Ad Age? It’s the “new front of medical marketing,” Rich Thomaselli, Ad Age editor, calls it. With upwards of 30 million Americans gaining health insurance coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordability Act (PPACA, or “health reform” broadly writ), hospitals are competing for new business, along with aging baby
Fiscal unfitness: U.S. hospitals still suffer negative impacts from the recession in 2010
Bad debt and charity care as a proportion of hospitals’ total gross revenue increased for 9 in 10 hospitals in the U.S. according to the American Hospital Association’s press release, Hospitals Continue to Feel Lingering Effects of the Economic Recession. Today’s macroeconomic news that U.S. economic growth slowed in the first quarter of 2010 doesn’t bode well for hospitals or for patients, for whom the so-called “jobless recovery” in the nation creates financial insecurity and, more specifically, health care insecurity. Hospitals’ other negative economic impacts include depressed numbers of elective procedures (suffered by 72% of U.S. hospitals), depressed overall patient volumes
The decline and fall of American hospital finance
Declining admissions, growing bad debt, rising interest expenses, falling reimbursements, illiquid capital markets, layoffs, cutbacks, and crashing credit ratings…these are the co-morbidities of the American hospital-as-patient in the 2009 economy. The American Hospital Association (AHA) has revisited its landmark survey on the U.S. hospital economy published in November, and today released The Economic Crisis: The Toll on the Patients and Communities Hospitals Serve. AHA has found that the economy is having devastating consequences on both individual patients and the larger communities that the hospitals serve. 9 in 10 hospitals have made cutbacks to services by cutting staff, administrative expenses, and
Health Populi’s Tea Leaves for 2008
I “leave” you for the year with some great, good, and less-than-sanguine expectations for health care in 2008. These are views filtered through my lens on the health care world: the new consumer, health information technology, globalization, politics, and health economics. Health politics shares the stage with Iraq. Health care is second only to Iraq as the issue that Americans most want the 2008 presidential candidates to talk about, according to the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. Several candidates have responded to the public’s interest with significant health care reform proposals. But major health reform – such as universal access
Hearts and the hospital bill – and the role of health IT
The annual national hospital bill may reach $1 trillion by 2008. This forecast is brought to you in a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Hospital charges in 2005 totalled $873 billion in 2005, nearly doubling in ten years. The hospital bill was covered primarily by three payor segments: Medicare, which paid nearly one-half of the total hospital bill; private insurance, covering nearly one-third; and Medicaid, at 14% of the total. What are we spending money on in hospitals? Putting aside pregnancy/childbirth and infant care, the top three conditions are heart-related: coronary artery disease ($46
Hammers, nails and health spending – regional variations in the U.S.
There is more money spent on health care for each citizen of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania than for a citizen in Utah, Arizona or Nevada. In fact, per capita health spending was 59% lower in Utah than Massachusetts in 2004. The latest state-by-state spending variations are highlighted in Health Affairs’ web-exclusive feature. Welcome to the statistical phenomenon in health care known as “regional variation.” The guru-researcher of regional variation is John Wennberg, who has detailed these trends in fhe Dartmouth Atlas. New regional health spending data were published in Health Affairs, which we health economists and policy wonks eagerly anticipate
I was invited to be a Judge for the upcoming CES 2025 Innovation Awards in the category of digital health and connected fitness. So grateful to be part of this annual effort to identify the best in consumer-facing health solutions for self-care, condition management, and family well-being. Thank you, CTA!
Thank you Team Roche for inviting me to brainstorm patients as health citizens, consumers, payers, and voters in the Healthcare Transformers series.
For the past 15 years, the annual CES conference in Las Vegas has been my go-to meeting for updating my research and network in digital health and consumer-facing electronics that people find meaningful for their well-being, families, and home lives. I'll be back in Vegas in January for a full week of Media Days, one-on-one meetings, and speaking about my perspectives on health consumers.