Healcare IT: No Such ing as a Remote Island by Michl Leonard

I recently went on vacation to a small island with my wife and 2 young daughters. The island was only accessible by ferry, and at one point my wife considered our surroundings and asked me if there was a hospital on the island. I had seen a sign for the island medical center, so I knew there was medical care available should we be in need when the ferry does not run. Though we thankfully never needed the medical center, it did make me wonder how a small clinic on a remote island utilizes the power of healthcare IT to care for its often steady stream of visiting-only patients. It would be great if that small island clinic, and every other hospital and clinic around the country for that matter, could pull up my particular family's medical records on demand from their EMR, thereby providing caregivers with insight into any allergies or pre-existing conditions that might alter treatment decisions for us.

That is one of the major benefits I think healthcare IT can provide patients - easy access to a patient's healthcare record regardless of where we are. Further, there are many other benefits for patients, such as increased convenience and quality of their care, cost savings, more participation by patients in their care delivery decisions, and better care coordination between specialists, primary care physicians and other caregivers.

For healthcare organizations big and small, there is a major transformation underway and the rapid introduction and adoption of healthcare IT solutions is making that transformation possible. Hospitals' ability to compete and provide better care will depend on the success of their transformation efforts and the adoption of new technologies to increase quality while controlling costs. The advent of Accountable Care Organizations, (ACO), focusing on population health management, will only increase the reliance on healthcare IT systems to improve the health of individual patients and patient populations managed by ACOs.

With the promise of better patient care and cost containment as a result of healthcare reform, along with the associated incentives and penalties, healthcare organizations are deploying complex solutions to enable caregivers, while providing analytical tools to help improve outcomes. These systems produce incredible amounts of patient data that need to be backed up and archived for long periods of time after each clinical encounter. On top of this so called data deluge, these systems are critical to clinical operations, so there needs to be strong Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans in place. This is just a sampling of the many issues that healthcare organizations need to consider.

Sometime in the future, I believe we will look back on these times and reflect that all the heavy investments in transforming our healthcare system was well worth the herculean effort, and that our healthcare system will be ultimately providing higher quality care and working better with patients to actively manage their health decisions.

In a recent webinar Managing the Healthcare Data Deluge , Shahid Shah, CEO of Netspective Communications and I discussed many of these issues and more. Consider your own remote island of IT issues.

LINK:	http://blogs.ironmountain.com/2013/industry/healthcare-information-man...
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