This popped up a while ago and seemed to be worth passing on.
9 ways health IT – beyond EHRs – helps patients
December 12, 2011 | Kristine Martin Anderson, Senior vice president, Booz Allen Hamilton's healthcare market
Even among very knowledgeable people, the concept of health information technology is often equated with its most familiar element, “electronic health records.” Adoption of electronic health records are a critical first step to realizing the transformational power of Health IT – but getting out of paper enables even greater HIT capabilities.
The fact that health record data can now be digitized is what allows it to move. With the help of other technologies, that same information can be integrated with multiple information sources, analyzed and presented in ways that produce knowledge, stimulate coordinated actions between and across caregivers and more fully engage patients in their care decisions.
Health IT has the power to improve the health care system to result in safer and more efficient care; care that’s more convenient for patients and health providers alike.
Here are nine examples of health IT — what it means, why it matters, and why you should care. Put simply, health IT does the following:
1. Reduces medical errors. When designed appropriately and implemented correctly by trained professionals, Health IT helps to identify potential mistakes, such as flagging possible interactions between prescribed medications that may cause serious complications.
2. Improves collaboration throughout the health care system. Digitized health information can move, integrate and paint a real-time picture of the whole person, creating increased knowledge, dialogue and collaboration among the patient and his or her physicians, specialists, nurses and technicians. This leads to improved patient-centered understanding and coordinated action. It can also enhance preventative care, by automating a reminder system for certain tests like mammograms.
3. Facilitates better patient-care transition. As patients move from the one care setting to another—going home from the hospital, or from one practice to another—health IT can facilitate a seamless transition from one stage of care to the next and help to ensure that patients get the treatment and medicine they need without delays or mix-ups.
4. Enables faster, better emergency care. When seconds can make the difference, today’s technology allows results from tests conducted by first responders to be sent wirelessly to doctors in the emergency departments, allowing physicians to be ready and waiting with a plan of action when the patient arrives. Health IT also can facilitate access to an incoming patient’s health information—even if the patient is incapacitated—alerting providers of any existing conditions, allergies and prescriptions.
---- Read other 5 at site
Health IT is transforming the way health-related information is gathered, stored, shared and used and holds the promise of revolutionizing our health care system, making it more efficient, more effective and more focused on meeting the needs of patients.
Kristine Martin Anderson is a senior vice president in Booz Allen Hamiton's healthcare market.
Kristine Martin Anderson is a senior vice president in Booz Allen Hamiton's healthcare market.
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It is really a worthwhile exercise to see how many of these benefits we are likely to actually harvest with the PCEHR program. I suspect it is not as many as we might like!
David.
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