Healthcare has lagged other industries in terms of its adoption of information technology systems. Domino's Pizza knows what you ordered last month. Kiosks at the airport allow you to swipe any credit card or your driver's license and instantly pull up your reservation and show you your seat assignment in graphical form. You can walk down the street with a smartphone and find an open table at a nearby restaurant of your choosing without even calling them. You can track a package in near real time through a shipper's website.
On the other hand, when checking in at many doctors' offices, most patients are still presented with a clipboard and asked to fill out name, address, phone number and insurance information, even if they were just there last week. If you have a test or procedure done by an outside lab or facility, you typically have to wait for days to find out the results, usually because it takes that long for the fax or paper result to find its way back into your patient folder.
Yet if you go to any healthcare conference or read any medical publications, you are barraged with software and technology vendors who claim their system will save you time and money and clear out the logjam created by the mountains of paper records.
Is this true? If so, why haven't more providers embraced technology? Are the systems not yet sufficiently advanced? Are these systems ready for "prime time"?
Electronic medical records systems and practice management systems have been around for decades. Some physicians and practices have adopted them long ago, but the vast majority of facilities are still waiting on the sidelines or are struggling along with systems they bought years ago which have not kept pace with newer features like intuitive user interfaces and reporting capabilities.
ASCs tend to be more advanced and willing to embrace technology than medical practices as a whole, because when a patient needs an outpatient procedure, they have choices about where to go. ASCs generally go to a lot of effort to make their facilities look and feel attractive, and generally that includes a bit more investment in information technology. More and more, patients are equating better outcomes with visible information technology. And ASC staff members want to remain competitive in their skills, and another year of experience with paper charts doesn't improve their resume.
So, the question is, is now a good time to invest in IT systems, whether it be for hardware or software, or should you wait for another two years for Moore's Law to kick in? (Moore's Law, simply stated, says that computing horsepower roughly doubles every two years for the same cost and size.)
The answer: There has never been a better time to invest in either hardware or software for healthcare IT. Costs continue to drop while performance and capabilities continue to increase. Features that are available today — on both the hardware and the software side — were not available two years ago. And the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to cross the "digital divide," because in the meantime you will amass even more paper records and create even more manual processes that you will have to unwind.
To avoid a technology mistake, you should follow a few simple rules: (1) Do your homework carefully and invest in quality systems, ones that have been proven in similar settings to yours; (2) Do everything possible to ensure your systems are "future-proofed" and won't have to be abandoned or replaced; and (3) Design your IT systems in a modular, scalable fashion so you can add additional functionality and capabilities as your needs grow.
In summary, there have never been more quality information technology products and systems available for ASCs. The horsepower and features have both increased, and the prices and physical size have both decreased. So now is the perfect time to dump the clipboard and the room full of manila folders.
And two years from now, the same statement will also be true.
Marion K. Jenkins, PhD, FHIMSS, is founder and CEO of QSE Technologies, which provides IT consulting and implementation services for ASCs and other medical facilities nationwide. Learn more about QSE Technologies at www.qsetech.com.
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