Leverage Low Cost/High Output Technology

Becker's Hospital Review recently asked 51 industry leaders how tech can solve healthcare issues. Specifically, hospital leaders were asked "if you could wave a magic wand and eliminate only three vulnerabilities with technology, what would you prioritize?"

I liked Ryan Thousand 's response the best and am reposting it here. The quality of healthcare would be increased and the cost would be decreased by leveraging low cost/high output technology. If you are looking to deploy the most secure, most efficient fax technology, please feel free to reach out to me to hear more about ETHERFAX . We can tell you how to reach interoperability. Here are Ryan's comments:

Ryan Thousand. Strategic advisor for the office of the CIO of Valley View Hospital (Glenwood Springs, Colo.): It’s hard to pick just three top pain points without first going into methodology. I honestly feel we often apply technology in places where it does not necessarily belong, but rather it has been applied in the past and has historical context to show that it might be a benefit to another organization. I’ve always been of the mindset that sometimes you need to take off your cape and use existing processes that leverage low cost, but high output technology. For example, utilization of email and fax machines in place of high dollar interfaces and new processes are often a better answer at least for the short term or proof of concept. So this leads me to my three answers in or top pain points I would solve.

1.    Patient engagement: We need to focus on our customers. Putting them first will inertly create happy employees! Since much of the regulatory landscape around MIPS and MACRA are focused on patient engagement, it aligns well with this approach.

2.    Provider and clinician satisfaction: Like the above, our customers in IT are also our providers and clinicians. We need to focus on reducing burnout and use innovations like FHIR and other interoperability platforms to truly reduce burden and steps and not ADD to them. We need to focus on the five rights of the provider! The right data presented at the right time and in the right format, so that clinicians can focus on the right diagnosis and right treatments for their patients!

3.    Payer provider interoperability: With the data we have today and the rise of AI, we have the tools to fix the payer and provider integration. You can again couple this with the above items in the sense that payers have a lot more data than most providers. Using tools like claims analysis and structured claims risk data coupled with the clinical data we have in the EMRs, we can take health portability and interoperability to a new level.  We are all in this for one reason: healthcare; and now is the time for our payers to 'prove it' rather than profit.