Tomorrow's Healthcare needs a strong IT infrastructure, today?

By Dr. Brandon Savage, Chief Medical Officer, GE Healthcare IT

As an industry, healthcare faces nearly unprecedented change. It's inevitable. We're not sure where that change will take us but we know it's coming- and we also know there are things we can to do today to get better prepared.

Today GE is building out a new way of thinking about health that we call "healthymagination," the recognition that our global healthcare systems are simply unsustainable in their current forms. They will require sweeping changes around cost, quality and access in order to succeed. For healthcare delivery organizations, the cost, quality and access issues are joined by the very real concerns around reimbursement-and those that will weather the storm will share a common trait- a strong healthcare IT infrastructure enabling impressive-and necessary - flexibility.

As part of our healthymagination commitment we pledge to invest $3 billion in research and development aimed at launching at least 100 innovations that lower cost, increase access and improve quality by 15 percent by the year 2015. An additional $2B is earmarked for financing and expanding the reach of IT to rural and underserved areas. We pledge, during that same timespan, to work with partners to focus those innovations on accelerating healthcare IT, targeting high-tech products to more affordable price points, broadening access to the underserved and supporting consumer-driven health. We're also planning to "walk the walk" by expanding health efforts for GE's 320,000 employees working in 100 countries across the globe. We're working to create new wellness and healthy worksite programs while keeping annual health insurance cost increases below the rate of inflation.

It's an ambitious project with lofty goals and at the very core is our commitment to healthcare IT. In fact, one of the first new programs under healthymagination is our Stimulus Simplicity project, offering doctors and hospitals an easier path to electronic medical records (EMR) adoption. This program is a joint offering from GE Healthcare and GE Capital and contains two core elements - a commitment to help ensure the EMRs are certified (a precursor to federal stimulus reimbursement eligibility) and an interest-free loan with deferred payments. The program helps to address some of the biggest barriers to EMR adoption faced by healthcare providers, uncertainty around future standards and interim funding to cover the capital investment. No matter how "meaningful use" ends up being defined, it is clear the use of an EMR and IT will be necessary to meet the standards.

By actively pursuing user engagement, healthymagination encourages successes similar to those we have seen from academic centers like Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, a 925-bed facility serving the Philadelphia and Delaware Valley region of Pennsylvania from five sites. The hospital system wanted to improve the safety of the medication ordering process in its inpatient pediatric areas, including its neonatal intensive care unit. Their goal was to reduce the number of pharmacist interventions - calls from pharmacists to physicians to double-check the details of medication orders. Each intervention indicated a potential medication error averted and also required the physician to spend time clarifying the order rather than delivering patient care.

To meet these goals, the hospital system decided to enhance its existing Centricity Enterprise clinical system by adding a Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) module. This assisted in the elimination of significant risks associated with illegible or incomplete handwritten medication orders. As the hospital's clinical IT team prepared for CPOE implementation, they built common orders for all medications used in the pediatric population. This provided the physician with a reference point for the usual dosing of the medication. The results are convincing. During the two-month period prior to the implementation of CPOE in the pediatric areas, the hospital reported 139 pharmacist interventions out of 1,604 orders. Following CPOE implementation, the organization reduced pharmacist interventions by 97.6 percent because of the improved quality and clarity of the original medication orders. What's more, using CPOE, 99.6 percent of infusions were ordered according to established standard concentrations. Now physicians and pharmacists are able to save time previously spent resolving issues with orders and focus more on direct patient care.

Anecdotes like this make our current vantage point such an exciting place to be. We know change is coming. We know healthcare IT is the key to the flexibility we'll all need to adapt to it. We also know the next Thomas Jefferson University Hospital is already out there today. Healthymagination represents our commitment to find them and help them advance patient care. To learn how, please visit www.healthymagination.com.