NEMUG Newsletter
October 2003, Articles
- Board Meetings
- From The Chair
- September Meeting: John Glaser, CIO of Partners Healthcare Shares IT Projections and Management Considerations
Board Meetings
NEMUG Executive Board Meetings are open to anyone to attend. Your presence and views are welcome at any time. The meetings are held on the second Monday of even-numbered months, at the office of Henry Elliott in Wellesley. We try to get started at 6:00 pm. The next meeting is on:
- 12/8/03
If you are planning to attend, please let a board member know in advance, as we provide food and eat as we work, and need to be sure we have enough for everyone. The complete address for the meetings is:
Henry Elliott and Company Inc.
One Washington St. Suite 208
Wellesley, MA 02481
From the Chair
Each time I've written an issue of this column, I've said that NEMUG is your organization, and that we board members are here to serve all the members. This month we are focusing the meeting on this topic, and hope many of you will come and share your thoughts and ideas with us. Please take a minute to read the description of the meeting, and plan to come on November 11th.
Looking ahead, here are some events to note:
- The upcoming SATURDAY SCHOOL, scheduled for November 1st, has been rescheduled for November 15th. This is due to a scheduling conflict with our hosts at InterSystems. The topic again is moving data from relational databases to M. We will convert the Access sample database, "Northwind" to Caché. At the end of the day you will have moved it into M, built a schema, written a query against it in Caché, and set up a web-based user interface using CSP pages. The leader will again be Joel Solon of InterSystems. Please send email to Ben Hurley (bhurley1@partners.org) to sign up for this event.
- Coming Attraction: The web site will soon have a self-subscribing (and unsubscribing) email list. We hope to use this to inform you of upcoming meetings and educational opportunities.
- January meeting: A buzzword in the industry these days is "Enterprise Application Integration", or EAI. In January we will take up this topic, with a focus on these questions:
- What is it?
- How does it affect me, an M user?
Watch the web site for more details as each item above is finalized.
Marilyn D. Paterno, Chair
September Meeting: IT Projections and Management Considerations
Presenter: John Glaser, CIO of Partners Healthcare
"Use your fingers," was one of John Glaser's fun management hints of the day as he enumerated four areas importance for the future of Information Technology in the health care field:
- Computerized medical records
- Remote delivery of care
- Integration of provider and payer systems
- Regional integration of clinical systems
For first topic, computerizing medical records, John set the pattern of his talk of demonstrating the problems of the current practice, the cost savings if implemented and the clear business logic about why it is a good idea. For example, banks, gas stations and grocery stores cooperate with an exchange of information regarding credit cards, why can't the medical field do the same with similar financial incentives? Of the 1000 patients visiting outpatient clinics, 14 are suffering a life threatening or serious ADE, (Adverse Drug Event). Of 1000 taking prescriptions 40 are wrong. There are many other examples of expensive problems with delivery of medication and other errors which could be resolved with access to computerized medical records.
The remote delivery of care also provides opportunities for cost savings. Tele-consultations have added to the efficiency of specialists. For example dermatologists have provided patient diagnoses from high quality photos without the overhead of travel time, office visitation and delay of the delivery of care. By use of remote diagnosis, the productivity of the dermatologist has been increased by a factor of three. Another new technology, eConsults have enabled patients all over the world to get second opinions from top doctors through the internet causing changes in their diagnosis 5% of the time, and the care plans to change 85% of the time. The incentive for large companies is a more attractive insurance plan to attract and retain employees even for remote locations. Finally the Patient Gateway is a third technology that enables patients to have access to scheduling visits, refills, advice and other medical help. It has been demonstrated at Kaiser the savings by a decrease of office visits by 11%, 14% more illnesses were treated at home, and calls to nurses have been reduced by 46%.
The integration of payer and provider system has many financial benefits. Although the payment of claims would be sped up, decreasing the advantage of float, the insurance companies would have a reduction of employees dealing with delayed claims and questions of incorrect information. They would have happier customers and retain business. They would cut down on the overhead of checking data for the health care provider as well. There are issues to resolve of access to medical records and the start up costs for small practices.
Finally the importance of regional integration of clinical systems will cut down on the duplication of patient data which has been growing as patients move and patients with multiple chronic diseases consult more doctors.
This is an extraordinary time in health care. We need to continue the trend towards more ambulatory care, payer provider collaborations and regional integration of clinics. A strong information technology infrastructure is needed in these critical areas.
~ submitted by Heidi Pape Laird