STC Blog
Health Information Exchange: Opportunities Abound to Improve the Public’s Health and EconomyTodd Watkins – STC Managing Partner/CAO
With the emphasis and funding recently being placed on Health Information Exchange (HIE) to support our nation’s health reform initiatives, it is important that those trusted with the responsibility of leveraging Health Information Technology (HIT) maintain focus on the ultimate outcome — improving the health and wellbeing of our nation’s citizens.
The initial push of the state-designated entities receiving HIE, Regional Extension Center (REC), and other federal funding is logically around planning how the various information stakeholders are going to be able to effectively share information between their currently disparate systems. To accomplish this, standards around information technology, vocabularies, and infrastructure must be created and adopted. Much work has already been done around creating and even adopting such standards, but much work remains.
While it is important that our health care sectors continue this good work, it is also imperative that we all do so with our eye towards outcomes we can immediately impact to improve the health of our population. A focus on improving the health of our population undoubtedly translates into lower health care costs and improved work force productivity. A fully integrated health care system is not a prerequisite to accomplishing some immediate outcomes that have significant impact on both the nation’s health and economy. By focusing on specific illnesses, populations, and/or sectors of the health care system, specific measurable outcomes including Return on Investment (ROI) can be realized.
Dr. Maggie Gallaher, Medical Director for the Public Health Division of the State of New Mexico Department of Health, recently wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Albuquerque Journal and the Las Cruces Sun News on the current epidemic of pertussis in California as well as the impact pertussis continues to have in New Mexico:
“Pertussis is a major disease that makes people sick for three weeks and sometimes much longer. It’s a major hassle for people to be out of work or out of school for five days of antibiotics.”
Pertussis is a vaccine-preventable disease that can prove deadly for young infants. Furthermore, many studies over the years have been conducted that reveal the cost of treating pertussis is much greater than the cost of prevention through vaccinations. By focusing on increasing the vaccination coverage levels from the current national average of 85% would lower the incidence of the disease, improve the overall health of our children and adults, lower health care costs, and improve workforce productivity. According to Dr. Gallaher, in New Mexico alone there are years where hundreds of pertussis cases are investigated and treated.
There are many other examples including:
- Electronic reporting of other specific vaccine-preventable diseases between laboratories, hospitals, private providers and state public health departments.
- Utilizing existing predictive analysis solutions for identifying potential exposures to outbreaks of “at risk populations.”
- Calculating Body Mass Index of infants and children from existing systems that already capture and monitor height and weight to target obesity in the US and obesity-related chronic conditions.
Posted on: July 13, 2010 | Links: Facebook |
