The problem "is mainly that computer systems are built for the accountants and managers and not built to help doctors, nurses and patients," the report's lead author, Dr. David Himmelstein, said in an interview with Computerworld.
Himmelstein, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, said that in its current state, hospital computing might modestly improve the quality of health care processes, but it does not reduce overall administrative costs. "First, you spend $25 million dollars on the system itself and hire anywhere from a couple-dozen to a thousand people to run the system," he said. "And for doctors, generally, it increases time they spend [inputting data]."
Himmelstein said that only a handful of hospitals and clinics realized even modest savings and increased efficiency -- and those hospitals custom-built their systems after computer system architects conducted months of research.
This is a quote from an interview by Computerworld with one of the authors of a research paper published in the American Journal of Medicine on the impact of IT on the delivery of health care in the United States.
Their conclusion, based on the data: not much.
However, I think there are some hints here about the root cause of the problem:
- Don't expect benefits from systems built as a means to an end;
- Build systems to fit the people, not the other way around; and
- Real ROI data takes time and effort to gather.
This is also all very interesting when you consider my recent posts about measuring the value of Enterprise 2.0 versus the clear and obvious bottom line benefits of three-letter acronym systems... because it sounds like these health information systems were sold on the same sort of 'hard' ROI numbers.
Hat tip to Nicholas Carr.
