jaredsinclair.com
I'm a registered nurse. I make apps for nurses.
I live in Nashville. Contact me on gmail at jaredsinclair.rn
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Why We Need a Healthcare IT Revolution (and Why We Don’t)
It’s a universally-accepted fact that healthcare lags behind most other industries in terms of information technology utilization. Less than one percent of our hospitals have gone fully paperless. Half of them are halfway electronic. An astonishing ten percent have no electronic medical records whatsoever.
Why should these numbers disturb us? Because healthcare costs are on their way to consuming one-fourth of every dollar spent. It is not possible to reign in these costs without having access to the kind of reliable data that only IT integration can provide. Who are the big spenders? What tests, procedures, or drugs are being ordered the most? Are any of them unnecessary? Other big industries have been able to leverage IT in their favor, reducing costs while streamlining productivity. Healthcare can expect to reap the same benefits, but only if the implementation is complete and functional.
But we should also be clear about what a healthcare IT revolution won’t accomplish. It won’t make us healthier. It won’t encourage us to eat less fast food or drink less soda. It won’t force our collective asses off our couches and onto some treadmills. Americans spend the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare in the world, yet we are far from the healthiest because our culture promotes poor choices. Healthcare IT will help us to slim down our budgets, but it won’t slim down our waistlines, which are the real cause of all our trouble.
