IT Vital to Improving Health Care

After meeting last October, the Health Sector Assembly – a group of almost 60 public and private health care organizations, corporations, and institutions, led by the American Medical Association – recently issued a report on recommendations for improving health care access, affordability, and cost-effectiveness.

The top recommendation is to better align financial incentives for insurers and health care providers with the needs of the patient. The second suggestion is to enhance the efficiency of the system via process improvement. IT is integral to this process, but the report cautions that "IT can be expensive and add little to access or affordability unless judiciously applied."

To aid the Health Sector Assembly goals, IT infrastructure must:

1) affordable for users

2) provide data for quality improvement

3) provide point-of-care information for patient care

4) support innovation in delivery (e.g., patient connectivity)

5) provide system-wide connectivity among providers at all levels.

The final recommendation was to increase patient access to health care information.

Read the full study at the HealthWise site