Understanding healthcare technology and clinical systems challenges

There’s some nice content at Health Care Technology. It’s really about healthcare best practices but with an emphasis on how technology can help implement those best practices. Their description of their site:

The white papers and solution profiles are a collection of viewpoints on the practices, tools, technologies, and trends that affect health care today. These include patient safety issues, efficiency gains in administering care, and improvements on labor issues by increasing time with patients versus time spent on paperwork, all of which ultimately improve patient care and the financial cost of providing that care. This issue focuses on enabling collaboration between payers and providers.

Some of the major areas of content include:

Chapter 1: Introduction

THE TIME HAS COME for health care organizations to adopt a new approach to address increasing market pressures. Payers and providers have already attempted their own separate, piecemeal approaches to deal with the problems of accelerating costs, limited access to capital, administrative inefficiencies, medical errors, and customer dissatisfaction – with limited success, at best. Collaboration can enable health care organizations to find common solutions and mutually improve their operational performance, and achieve a win-win-win for payers, providers, and consumers. This section introduces the concept and history of collaboration in health care, and describes the types of opportunities it creates for organizations that are willing and able to take their relationships to new levels.

Chapter 2: Making It Work

FORGING NEW RELATIONSHIPS, developing clear lines of communication, and getting beyond acrimony that traditionally has plagued health care organizations can be difficult. This section explores the requirements necessary for payers and providers to tackle their business challenges together. It explores how health care organizations can develop the trust, funding, and commitment necessary to develop a truly collaborative working relationship.

Chapter 3: Leveraging Technology

COLLABORATION IS MORE THAN CONNECTIVITY. While connectivity is largely technology-driven and finite, collaboration is process-driven and continuous. In order to get the most out of connectivity and technology, collaboration is required. Conversely, in order to succeed, collaboration must capitalize on connectivity. This chapter explores how payers and providers can leverage emerging technology solutions to address their mutual IT infrastructure needs.

Chapter 4: Streamlining Internal Operations

COLLABORATION OFFERS THE POTENTIAL to enhance the performance and lower the costs associated with administrative processes. Medical providers can link more efficiently with insurers to improve end-to-end processes. This begins with eligibility and enrollment and extends through scheduling, registration, accounts receivable management, and customer services, to claims payment. Payers and providers have the potential to eliminate burdensome manual tasks, simplify procedural requirements, improve accuracy, reduce rework, and shorten cycle times. They can leverage electronic connectivity and work together to truly integrate already intertwined administrative processes.

Chapter 5: Enhancing Clinical Care

ONCE HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATIONS have collaborated to improve performance of their administrative functions, they can address care delivery functions to achieve clinical quality improvement. This section explores how payers and providers can share knowledge and direction in disease management, care management, e-prescribing, laboratory, radiology, point-of-care technologies, and predictive health modeling to achieve their mutual goals of improved patient safety and lower medical costs.

Chapter 6: Closing the Loop with Consumers

Just as other industries have changed their products, service, and distribution to meet the increasing demands of the marketplace, consumers are bringing expectations of choice, responsiveness, and convenience to the health care industry. As a consequence, health care organizations “ignore the market at their peril.� They must meet the growing consumer demand for information on clinical care and quality, bring innovative products and services to the market, support consumer empowerment in treatment decisions, and streamline administrative functions to keep costs in line and prices competitive. This section explores how payers and providers can collaborate to meet consumer needs.

Chapter 7: Addendum to Vol. 1: Clinical Transformation

HEALTH CARE TECHNOLOGY: Innovating Clinical Care Through Technology, Volume 1, examined the implementation of advanced clinical systems. This addendum to Volume 1 is a collection of papers that are of interest in the ongoing necessity to transform clinical operations.