Another Voice / Health care
Internet is key to improving efficiency, quality
Updated: 09/05/08 6:32 AM
The recently announced merger of Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center is an important step in a series of critical changes needed to enhance the quality of care in Western New York. However, we need to take an important physician-driven next step: the implementation of a regionwide medical information exchange connecting physicians, hospitals and insurers.
Providing physicians access to secure medical records via the Internet holds tremendous promise in tackling two of the most challenging aspects of the current system: quality and cost.
Emergencies are not the only time that shared information is useful. For example, embedding prevention measures in the medical information exchange for reporting to clinicians and public health officials will help transform our health system from one that focuses on treating illness and disease to one focused on prevention, resulting in improved overall health.
Better utilization of data and information between doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies also enables users to support new prevention and outcome-based reimbursement models.
Through a grant from the New York State Department of Health, a consortium of health care entities in Western New York — including the region’s major hospital systems and health insurance companies — have banded together to create the health information exchange HealtheLink, the Western New York Clinical Information Exchange consortium. Through this grant, a technical infrastructure is being constructed to enhance health care while ensuring the privacy and security of any medical information being retrieved.
The critical element for the long term success of this network is physician participation — and without it, no health information exchange system will become a reality.
Despite the many benefits, a recent study by Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston concluded that only 4 percent of physicians nationally have adopted “fully functional” computerized health records systems.
The key reason for this is that computerized medical records in a doctor’s office need to be connected to medical information for a patient who comes from outside the doctor’s office. The health information exchange provides the secure infrastructure to allow this to occur.
A major challenge is the cost for computerized medical records and for connection to a secure medical information exchange (costs for connection to an electronic exchange network start in the tens of thousands of dollars).
The cost of implementation is, at the outset, substantial for physicians. We tackle this challenge, however, because in terms of lives and money, the potential savings are too great to overlook.
Raghu Ram, M. D., is senior medical director of BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York and chairman of the Physician Advisory Committee for HealtheLink.
