HLC TALKING POINTS FOR HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Health care organizations, lawmakers, and other policy officials should support the automation of patient safety systems to the greatest extent possible. A voluntary health system information technology infrastructure should be encouraged and facilitated as broadly and rapidly as is feasible. This will help reduce the incidence of human error in the practice of medicine.
Health information technology (HIT) reduces medical errors. One university hospital that uses bedside bar code technology cut medication errors by 89 percent, improved emergency room documentation accuracy by 85 percent, and reduced overall discrepancies in details by 71 percent.
Health information technology increases patient satisfaction. HIT has been shown to give quicker access to clinical information, cut waiting times, reduce repeat appointments and redundant lab tests, and cut paperwork while making data collection simpler.
HIT can make medical staff recruitment and retention easier. One hospital system used IT to reduce 30 percent of nurses’ time spent searching for data in various places. And IT skill development can serve as a valuable recruiting tool.
HIT can also help improve consumer decisionmaking. Consumer benefits of health IT include getting more complete and accurate data from many sources, better case and disease management, and more accurate treatment options. IT can improve consumer decision-making by directing patients to higher quality, less costly care.
Efforts to establish HIT systems should consider the larger context. A hyperregulated, litigious, and price-controlled environment reduces the time, resources, and ability of health care organizations to implement the necessary technology that can affect patient safety.
Significant barriers must be overcome to ensure the widespread adoption of HIT systems:
The federal government should oversee the development of comprehensive standards of data exchange.
Federal financing is necessary so all health providers can acquire IT. oIn addition, best-practices collaboration will promote IT implementation. The lessons learned by “early adopters” will help develop “best practices.” Information-sharing of this kind will bring down the costs of IT.
A uniform national standard for privacy and security laws is an important step towards widespread adoption of HIT. Federal HIPAA standards are only a privacy floor. Providers, clearinghouses, and health plans must meet federal law as well as conflicting and duplicative state privacy standards to participate in a national HIT system. Multiple state and federal standards are a significant disincentive for all stakeholders.
Many organizations note the need for a federal uniform privacy standard. The Commission on Systemic Interoperability recommended that national standards for authentication, authorization, and security should foster the necessary infrastructure for consumers' confident adoption of health IT.
Considerable federal investment may be necessary to achieve widespread adoption of HIT. Studies have suggested that implementation of HIT will cost around $8 billion per year. That assumes adoption by 90 percent of hospitals and doctors’ offices over 15 years. However, HIT will also save money; the return on investment should be worthwhile for the federal government and industry. Efficiency gains alone save an estimated $77 billion or more a year.
Despite barriers, HIT is a key component of continued patient safety and health care quality improvement. HIT offers many benefits: more efficiencies in health care delivery, cost savings, safer and better patient care, and clinical and business process improvements. Congress, the administration, and the health care industry must work together to speed clinical adoption of HIT.
