A strong argument can be made that the health care field is one of the most information-intensive sectors in the U.S. economy and avoidance of the rapid advances in information technology is no longer an option. Consequently, the study of health care information technology and systems has become central to health care delivery effectiveness. This course covers the modern application of information technology that is critical to supporting the vision and operational knowledge of the health care leaders in managing the health care organization. Heath care decision-makers have to meet head-on the dynamic challenges of health care delivery quality, cost, access, and regulatory control. Additionally, this course integrates the Healthcare Information System as integral to the Quality Assurance Tracking Programs including measurement of systems inputs, processes, and outputs with special emphasis on systems outcomes research and organizational accountability to its various stakeholders, not the least of which are government regulators.
VICE PRESIDENT MSHS | President's Office ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Medicine, Cardiology ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Population Health Science and Policy Cardiology
Nicholas G Genes, MD, PhD
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Emergency Medicine ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Genetics and Genomic Sciences Emergency Medicine
[MUSIC].
This is Bruce Darrow and I'm going to continue focusing on the topic of what
patients want from clinicians and
what patients want from Healthcare Information Technology.
In the previous section,
we talked a little bit about information from Press Ganey.
And while the information from Press Ganey is very strong,
because it has a standard question set that is asked of millions of patients with
similar experiences, either in an office in an emergency department or a hospital.
The questions are limited and you're only getting the reaction
of the patient after they've had their healthcare experience.
So you're not looking at the drivers necessarily of what brought them into
that doctor or
hospital in the first place, you're asking them retrospectively how did that go.
So you're not getting at the choices that
really drive the initiation of the process.
So one way to look at this would be the way that the advisory board did.
And I'm going to go through results of the survey that they did in 2014.
They ask approximately 4,000 patients when they are looking at
primary care practices, what factors are important to them?
And the scenario specifically was, let's assume that you have the flu or
symptoms of a respiratory infection and your regular doctor isn't available.
What features would be important to you in choosing where to go for your healthcare?
And they asked a total of 56.
They gave 56 statements along the line of,
I can walk in without an appointment and be seen in 30 minutes.
I can walk in without an appointment and be seen in 60 minutes.
I can call and be told that I have an appointment later that day.
So they looked at 56 statements and they put them in categories of access or
convenience, cost, quality, reputation and service.
Not surprisingly, questions about access were very high and
questions about cost were very high consideration.
But it's instructive to look at what some of the questions regarding technology
did and where they landed.
So there was one statement which was the clinic
that you're going to has cutting edge technology.
And out of 56 statements,
that one was ranked 12th highest by the 4,000 people who were taking the survey.
So clearly, the presence of technology in the office is a very important factor.
And one of the things that I found fascinating was that
another statement that patients could choose from was,
the clinic has quality scores in the top 10% for my area.
While the question about technology landed at number 12 in patients' choices.
The one about quality landed at number 24.
What that means is that patients associate technology with quality
more strongly than they associate quality with quality.
And there's still this bias among people that technology is quality.
And not yet a reliance on the metrics that people would trust in a service like Yelp
or any rating system on the Apple iTunes store.
In places like that people are very amenable to a ratings system or
a quality scoring, but they're not quite there yet with healthcare.
Another thing that was offered to
the patients in the survey was where would you like to get your care?
And of these four choices would you like to have a clinic located near your home,
be able to email your provider with your symptoms,
have clinic located near where you do errands or clinic located near work?
The highest rated option was the top one which is to have a clinic located
near your home but
the second highest was to be able to email your symptoms to your doctor.
And there's a growing comfort with the population of
being able to do virtual care whether it'd be email or text-based visits or
video-based visits rather than in person for
those clinical scenarios wherein it's appropriate to do it that way.
We didn't have any questions in this questionnaire specifically
about virtual visits or anything like cloud based care,
where you are not going to a specific doctor but you are instead contacting
a doctor service which is staffed by other doctors, or nurses, or clinicians.
Licensed providers of some sort.
But over the course of the next five to ten years,
this is going to be a growing sector of the healthcare community,
and there will be more demand for patients to be able to get this kind of care.
So I think when we ask patients what they want from health IT,
Bruce J Darrow, MD, PhDVICE PRESIDENT MSHS | President's Office ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Medicine, Cardiology ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Population Health Science and Policy
Nicholas G Genes, MD, PhDASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Emergency Medicine ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR | Genetics and Genomic Sciences
