Technology Tipping Point May Be Nigh

Origin: Health-IT World (http://www.imakenews.com/health-itworld)
By: Deborah Ausman
Date:13/05/2003


"The promise of technology has eluded healthcare," pronounced David Lubinski, the head of Microsoft's year-old healthcare division, in his keynote address at last week's TEPR conference and exhibition in San Antonio. It's a diagnosis that Lubinski and the other 4,000 TEPR attendees don't plan to take lying down.

For 19 years, TEPR (short for Towards an Electronic Patient Record) has looked forward to the day when IT would eliminate the paper that's choking healthcare delivery cycles. It's been slow going. At this year's show, the sponsor of the annual "Most Wired" survey reported that even among this self-selected group of technology-savvy respondents, just 6 percent have implemented CPOE and only 11 percent report widespread usage of wireless systems in which they have invested.
But the "tipping point" may be nigh, predicted C. Peter Waegemann, CEO of the Medical Record Institute, which sponsors TEPR. The finger on the scale is the government's. Regulations such as HIPAA and the FDA's new barcode proposal make technology adoption imperative. Plus, the sleeping giant might awake -- consumers, who may start waving their newfound HIPAA-granted rights to demand higher quality service from healthcare providers.

TEPR's four-shows-in-one approach makes it an ideal place to share implementation stories, debate the legalities of electronic signatures and the impact of HIPAA mandates, or shop for the latest EMR systems or mobility solutions. The four programs delve into all the aspects associated with modern healthcare IT: EHR Systems, IT Tools & Security, Electronic Order Entry, Mobile Health Care, and e-Health Legal Forum.

Sessions emphasized what to do with the technology touted at the nearly 50 exhibit hall booths and recognized in TEPR's fourth annual awards recognizing the best healthcare informatics solutions. Some of the most lively sessions debated strategies for leveraging information stored in electronic records, whether to improve communication between doctors and patients or to create evidence-based pathways for facilitating and monitoring patient care. In one session, for example, representatives from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Veterans Health Administration, Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente debated the best way (not whether) to share medical record information with patients over the Internet.

But most sessions targeted the more fundamental question of how to get both physicians and consumers to use technology. Presentations frequently offered short courses in user psychology and change management before delving into the technical details of an installation, prompting Richard Alfieri, founder and managing partner of Delaware Cardiovascular Associates, to use his first slide to amend his talk's generic title to "How to Teach a Doctor to Use an Electronic Medical Record."

"It doesn't really matter what system you choose if you haven't prepped people to accept it," noted W. Dennis Stripling, a former president of the medical staff at Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas and a member of the Physicians Advisory Group at Texas Health Resources. Stripling's agenda for TEPR included looking at wireless options and tablets, but not merely for technology's sake. "I'm searching for anything -- be it technology or just advice on ways to change the culture -- that will make the system we ultimately implement more usable."