High costs, regulatory pressure, and other aliments have caused a substantial amount of pain in the healthcare sector in recent years. Pain is one of several forces driving the adoption of EMR — an approach that has been available for a decade or more but has only recently showed signs of strong growth.
U.S. citizens spend more on healthcare, on a per capita basis, than people in almost any other industrialized nation, yet the country was ranked 37th in the world by the World Health Organization (WHO) in overall healthcare system performance a year ago. The U.S. also boasts a low life expectancy rate and an extremely high number of uninsured citizens compared to other industrialized nations.
A large portion — 27 percent, according to Bain — of the total amount of money spent on healthcare in the U.S. (roughly $1.8 trillion) covers administrative costs. Yet, administrative processes, particularly on the clinical side of healthcare operations, remain largely paper-based and error-prone.
In the past 10 years, large healthcare organizations have relied on restructuring and process improvements, primarily those involving back-office activities, to lower costs. “Most of that low-hanging fruit has been picked,” notes Lewis Redd, managing partner, health & life sciences, with Accenture. “There is still constant financial stress on hospitals. The question is: How can these organizations reach the next level of higher performance?”
The answer involves technology on the clinical side, which healthcare consultants and systems implementers say has made strides in recent years. There is no enterprise resource planning (ERP) system equivalent for clinical applications, but 10 or so software vendors have developed systems that can meet a majority of a single organization’s clinical information needs. That core system is supplemented with interfaces to applications that support highly specialized areas of the hospital, such as radiology or the operating room.
EMR: The Inside Story
