JP Morgan Healthcare Conference-Highlights from Panel Discussion
“Beyond Meaningful Use: What’s next for Healthcare IT” Panel Discussion
The Healthcare IT panel was one of the most interesting discussions at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. With the adoption of EHRs, there is now a push to make data useful in lowering healthcare costs and increasing quality of care for patients. The primary question the panel addressed was, how will the U.S. afford healthcare during the next 25 years as baby boomers move through the system? How can we best use all the clinical data EHRs will create?
The discussion also highlighted significant opportunities for data analytics organizations. EHRs are and will continue to gather an extraordinary amount of data. “EHR-2″, as characterized by one speaker, will be the task of making the data meaningful to health care providers, payers and patients – data analytics applied at the point of care.
Topics discussed by the panel included:
- Using analytics to remove variation of care
- How will the industry move from transaction based medicine to medical management (ie discounted fee for services vs. population health management)
- There are 3 things needed to make the shift to medical management: 1) IT infrastructure; 2) data tools to measure quality and efficiency and incentives; and, 3) change management services
- Technologies can be adopted rather quickly, but changing physician behavior will be a very slow process; new providers coming out of medical school will adapt more easily
Trends:
- Shifting risk to providers
- Value based purchasing
- Coordination risks
- Integration across the care continuum
