Health IT’s most pressing issues may be so prevalent that they can’t be contained to a single post, as is obvious here, the fourth installment in the series detailing some of the biggest IT issues. There are differing opinions as to what the most important issues are, but there are many clear and overwhelming problems for the sector. Data, security, interoperability and compliance are some of the more obvious, according to the following experts, but those are not all, as you likely know and we’ll continue to see.
Here, we continue to offer the perspective of some of healthcare’s insiders who offer their opinions on health IT’s greatest problems and where we should be spending a good deal, if not most, of our focus. If you’d like to read other installments in the series, go here: Health IT’s Most Pressing Issues, Health IT’s Most Pressing Issues (Part 2) and Health IT’s Most Pressing Issues (Part 3). Also, feel free to let us know if you agree with the following, or add what you think are some of the sector’s biggest boondoggles.
First and foremost, of all the issues facing healthcare technology, I believe the top issue is the interoperability (or lack thereof) of most electronic medical records systems. Interfacing systems from disparate vendors usually takes expensive custom development, but hopefully the push for free access to EMR/EHR APIs in Stage 3 of the Meaningful Use Incentive program will finally bring semantic interoperability to health IT.
Paul Cioni, senior vice president, Healthcare & Infor Solutions Sales, Velocity Technology Solutions The top issue facing healthcare CIOs is that there is simply too much for them to do, including major initiatives involving information security, patient confidentiality, and revenue cycle management and reimbursement. Most are focusing on what’s urgent, rather than on what’s important. All of these issues are not only competing for a CIO’s budget, but also for his/her time. With so many things on the “as soon as possible” priority list, healthcare CIOs barely have time to strategically plan. It’s difficult for CIOs to create a five-year plan for the organization’s IT when they’re trying to figure out the next five months. A disaster recovery plan, for example, may not get created when CIOs are more concerned with downtime of clinical applications or the reporting of a data breach to the regulatory authorities.
Paul Cioni
The use of the cloud — with a comprehensive but flexible portfolio of service options- helps relieve CIOs from what I call the “tyranny of the urgent.” By allowing a cloud provider to manage a variety of back-office and ERP-related functions, the CIO can shift his focus to systems that affect clinical outcomes. Extending the secure, private cloud approach to clinical systems liberates key resources — budget and people — to focus on achieving meaningful use or embracing population health initiatives. Cloud deployment options like disaster recovery as a service or desktop as a service can conserve capital dollars and speed time to outcome. It’s not one issue – it’s all of them.
Health IT’s most pressing issues may be so prevalent that they can’t be contained to a single post, as is obvious here, the third installment in the series detailing some of the biggest IT issues. There are differing opinions as to what the most important issues are, but there are many clear and overwhelming problems for the sector. Data, security, interoperability and compliance are some of the more obvious, according to the following experts, but those are not all, as you likely know and we’ll continue to see.
Here, we continue to offer the perspective of some of healthcare’s insiders who offer their opinions on health IT’s greatest problems and where we should be spending a good deal, if not most, of our focus. If you’d like to read the first installment in the series, go here: Health IT’s Most Pressing Issues and Health IT’s Most Pressing Issues (Part 2). Also, feel free to let us know if you agree with the following, or add what you think are some of the sector’s biggest boondoggles.
The healthcare industry has undoubtedly become a bigger target for security threats and data breaches in recent years and in my opinion that can be attributed in large part to the industry’s movement to virtualization and the cloud. By adopting these agile, effective and cost-effective modern technological trends, it also widens the network’s attack surface area, and in turn, raises the potential risk for security threats.
We actually conducted some research recently that addresses evolving security challenges, including those impacting the healthcare industry, with the introduction of cloud infrastructures. The issue is highlighted by the fact that the growing popularity of cloud adoption has been identified as one of the key reasons IT and security professionals (57 percent) find securing their networks more difficult today than two years ago.
Paul Brient
Paul Brient, CEO, PatientKeeper, Inc. No industry on Earth has computerized its operations with a goal to reduce productivity and efficiency. That would be absurd. Yet we see countless articles and complaints by physicians about the fact that computerization of their workflows has made them less productive, less efficient and potentially less effective. An EHR is supposed to “automate and streamline the clinician’s workflow.” But does it really? Unfortunately, no. At least not yet. Impediments to using hospital EHRs demand attention because physicians are by far the most expensive and limited resource in the healthcare system. Hopefully, the next few years will bring about the innovation and new approaches necessary to make EHRs truly work for physicians. Otherwise, the $36 billion and the countless hours hospitals across the country have spent implementing electronic systems will have been squandered.
Email security is one of healthcare’s top IT issues, thanks, in part, to budget constraints. Many healthcare organizations have already allocated the majority of IT dollars to improving systems that manage electronic patient records in order to meet HIPAA compliance. As such, data security may fall to the wayside, leaving sensitive customer information vulnerable to sophisticated cyber-attacks that combine social engineering and spear-phishing to penetrate organizations’ networks and steal critical data. Most of the major data breaches that have occurred over the past year have been initiated by this type of email-based threat. The only defense against this level of attack is a layered approach to security, which has evolved beyond traditional email security solutions that may have been adequate a few years ago, but are no longer a match for highly-targeted spear-phishing attacks.
Dr. Rae Hayward, HCISPP, director of education and training at (ISC)²
Dr. Rae Hayward
According to the 2015 (ISC)² Global Information Security Workforce Study, global healthcare industry professionals identified the following top security threats as the most concerning: malware (77 percent), application vulnerabilities (74 percent), configuration mistakes/oversights (70 percent), mobile devices (69 percent) and faulty network/system configuration (65 percent). Also, customer privacy violations, damage to the organization’s reputation and breach of laws and regulations were ranked equally as top priorities for healthcare IT security professionals.
So what do these professionals believe will help to resolve these issues? Healthcare respondents believe that network monitoring and intelligence (76 percent), along with improved intrusion detection and prevention technologies (73 percent) are security technologies that will provide significant improvements to the security posture of their organizations. Other research shows that having a business continuity management plan involved in remediation efforts will help to reduce the costs associated with a breach. Having a formal incident response plan in place prior to any incident decreases the average cost of the data breach. A strong security posture decreases not only incidents, but also the loss of data when a breach occurs.
Health IT pain points seem to be lingering long despite the never ending promises and hope eternal new technology innovation seems to offer. Every sector has its prickles, no doubt, and much is left to overcome in healthcare, but given the complexity and the copious amount of change and development here, it’s of little surprise that pain is being felt.
What may be surprising, though, is that like patient engagement, there seems to be a different type of pain, and severity of pain, depending on who you ask.
With that, for greater clarity, I decided to ask some of health IT industry insiders what they’re pain points were and why. Their responses follow:
Dr. Trishan Panch
Dr. Trishan Panch, chief medical officer, Wellframe
One of the biggest pain points for hospitals is that we’ve come across a health system’s inability to scale care management resources. They are effective in improving outcomes when patients are engaged, but because of limitations around existing models (i.e. human interaction via phone or in-person) only a small proportion of the patient population can be engaged. That’s why organizations are turning to technology solutions to scale care management resources to reach more people.
One of the biggest pain points for physicians today is the lack of interconnectivity between different IT systems. Participation in the meaningful use program has helped create some common standards for communication but, for a variety of reasons, these have not yet lead to widespread, effective clinical data sharing. Few physicians can operate in the ecosystem of a single electronic medical record, since they often work in systems that are different, from practice, various hospitals and other places of care.
Interoperability is a pain point in healthcare IT, particularly when it comes to transitions in senior care. Connecting the care delivery ecosystem to provide safer transitions of care is critical to long-term care. While some individuals may require short-term rehabilitative care, others may need home-based care, assisted living or long-term and hospice care. As seniors move through these different stages or between acute care and post-acute care, these transitions pose challenges for healthcare providers. Ideally, all the information that clinicians need to treat the individual will be available when he arrives at his new destination. However, this is not always the case. Healthcare providers, both long-term and acute, must invest in an infrastructure that supports seamless transitions of care; interoperability plays a vital role. Connecting healthcare providers across the care continuum will allow for better health outcomes, help reduce unnecessary hospital re-admissions, as well as keep healthcare costs down.
There are various statistics about the negative impact paperwork has upon providing healthcare. The AHA has estimated it adds at least 30 minutes to every hour of patient care provided. A main pain point continues to be the ability for IT to implement efficient EHR systems. At the core of any EHR system are its image capture capabilities. It must be simple to use throughout the workflow process. This includes image capture, editing, saving and sharing. The capture, or scanning, must be speedy. Editing features must be clear in how to use. This minimizes learning curves at the start. It also optimizes the speed of processing documents during the life of its use. Easy saving to local or network locations should also enable simple and secure sharing too. When one, some or all of these areas stall, it can cripple the realization of benefits from digital document management.
Though health IT is improving, pain points remain for most docs. That’s according to new data published by HealthBiz Decoded, a Xerox site.
The actual data was collected by research company Wolter Kluwers Health from 300 practicing primary care physicians.
Based on their experiences with health IT, most (or in this case more than 150) said technology is improving patient care and safety.
At the same time, just as many are frustrated by the technology in their practices and more than 60 percent believe health tech is not helping improve relationships with patients, surprisingly.
