Our first new Co-Author is Mark Groshek, MD, from Kaiser Permanente, Colorado. He’s a leader nationally in tackling one of the most interesting issues in PCHIT, adolescent care. His first post follows this one and he will be a regular contributor about his experiences.
This blog is an experiment. It’s the chronicle of a journey of discovery around patient centered health information technology. Josh Seidman and I have been witnessing experiences at the practice level in health care organizations and talking about them here. This blog is not about Josh and Ted’s journey, alone, though.
What we also wanted to do was have the organizations themselves talk about their own experiences over time, with us. Therefore, as I have gone to each site, I have asked for a volunteer leader from each to blog with us. The leader can be a physician, nurse, any care provider. It can be a patient. This is a person that would talk about their experiences supporting patient-centered health information technology – including Personal Health Records and Information Therapy – the good times, the we wish things were better times, and the “what do we do now?” times. This is the benefit of the blog platform – it is not good at describing perfection – it’s great at describing a little bit of improvement every day.
Why do this?
There is so much work going on in this area, but very few places where organizations are talking about what they are doing as they go along. This is partly the nature of a risk averse industry, and partly the nature of time constraints. As I have said in my work, “Our patients don’t expect us to be perfect, they expect us to learn from our mistakes quickly.” I have personally been involved in the telling of my organization’s story via a blog on LEAN transformation, and we have been amazed at the response. People want to know that their health care system is working to improve every day.
Our Co-Authors will come from diverse care systems and demonstrate that this work isn’t easy, but we don’t do it because it’s easy. The idea is that others working in this area will be able to hear about people just like them supporting patient-centered care through technology.
Feel free to post comments to our Co-Authors, which they will get and respond to right on this blog. As more Co-Authors come on board, we will introduce them here. Welcome, Mark!
2 Comments
The move toward patient centric and managed healthcare is clearly underway. All it takes is a quick review of current employer health benefits/costs to recognize that the shift in costs to the consumer will be a driving force behind patients taking more care in managing their health. As more individuals begin taking control of their own health it will become necessary for providers, payers and patients to improve their communications channels without creating unnecessary computer time. Relevant healthcare information must flow from the patient workflow to the provider workflow seamlessly in order to drive the benefits for all. New technologies around mobile phone (AllOne Healthgroup and Diversinet) are surfacing that will make this communication cleaners and more timely. We are excited about the new technologies, but it is also important to take one step at a time. We can't wait for the holy grail application. We must start using tools that are available today to start improving patient health. To discuss further: [email protected]
Jim,
Well said. As you point out, we are just getting examples from the health care provider world where these technologies are being used.
From the business technology side, there are many more things waiting in the wings to be tried, and people will want to try them, with their health system, out of necessity. Thank you for your perspective.