Tuesday, January 13, 2009

EMR

Today you hear all the talk about EMR, the electronic medical record and how we need this across the board to change healthcare. Well guess what this is true, today in the USA there is somewhere between 14 and 29 % penetration in offices and hospitals. If you look closer they are using early 1990s equipment ie. monitors and some software is easily 10 years old. The problem has been who will pay for it and how do you get a ROI or return on your investment. If we look to other parts of the world they are light years ahead likely because of government subsidies and more investment in infrastructure.The ROI comes in decreased length of stays, better outcomes in the OR, lower mortalities, lower costs. Let me sight my favorite example from "The Tipping Point", Wallmart and the barcode. They stock 1/1 therefore keeping costs low and inventories down and efficiencies up. In medicine there always has to be back up for emergencies so that is different but it still saves thousands of dollars! Today there are buying consortiums like Premier and this is a great step in regards to that cost. For the future if I told you that I could bring you software that would interact with your existing systems and mine any data medical , business or otherwise, and be used for administrators, Q/A, research ,day to day operations would you look at it. I think you would, and it exists today and I will bring you this information if you wish to contact me.