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40 Responses  

1. Ulfah
   12.13.2009

   Computers don’t need to save money. They save time, which is what life in the balance truly depends on. As far as I am concerned, computers in hospitals are contributing plenty.
2. Humvee
   12.13.2009

   Last page of the report reads:"This study was made possible by a generous donation from the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Inc."
3. Faolan
   12.13.2009

   That and accuracy. Some doctor scribbles are nearly illegible.
4. Lakeithia
   12.13.2009

   My mother works as a radiology tech and they’ve just recently switched over to a computer-heavy system (more like heavier because they already used a lot of computers and machines) and they said it is great. They can quickly send results to private doctors(for their patients to see) or send them abroad in off-peak hours for second opinions and all sorts of other options that having medical staff + medical data networked together allows.I think any perceived expenses are completely unimportant when it comes to the speed you can process people from beginning to end and in every aspect of the hospital’s business that can now be done without paper or ink and is stored neatly , legibly, and safely (no chance of losing the data in a fire or due to negligence or theft).
5. Kaethe
   12.13.2009

   this is a good find..
6. Chloris
   12.13.2009

   It’s called an upgrade. I’d rather spend my time taking care of the patients and their medical issues than waste hours on scut work searching for the old meds they are not carrying, looking through volumes of old files or having to deal with a patient with no past medical history available because he mostly spent his life in a different state.Even if it costs more, it is worth it and is called progress. The costs might be steep in the short run, but they will definitely come down and break even in the long run.
7. Kaede
   12.13.2009

   As if entering data with a pen and paper and searching through file cabinets would be just as efficient? Something is amiss here.
8. Luz
   12.13.2009

   I work in healthcare IT. Cost savings is probably not the best reason to upgrade a system, but patient safety is vastly improved. We recently upgraded the way the nurses deliver meds, and we are catching an average of 5 med errors every week. Meaning without this system, patients would either be getting the wrong med or wrong dose. That certainly saves lives and is just one small example.
9. Osman
   12.13.2009

   I think it’s pretty neat how doctor’s offices can now zip your prescriptions right over to your pharmacy right from the computer.
10. Ida
    12.13.2009

    Hospital computers aren’t supposed to save money, they’re supposed to save lives. They do this by making the records accurate and readily available. Quit counting beans and start counting improved care.
11. Page
    12.13.2009

    It’s actually cost saving in the end I bet. Radiology, CT, etc. scans are all digital now – no manual processing, fast results, quick historical data.
12. Yamilet
    12.13.2009

    But don’t computers in hospitals save lives? Like if you’re rushed to an emergency room while on vacation, a doctor there can find your medical records from your usual hospital and see that you’re diabetic or you have an allergy to a certain kind of medicine.
13. Philippa
    12.13.2009

    Do you really believe that HMO’s and Inssurance company running/ruinning the hospitals would not use them if they did not save time and money ? Just tracking medical patient and there prescription with code bars must save time and money.
14. Idalee
    12.13.2009

    "The recently released study evaluated data on 4,000 hospitals in the U.S over a four-year period and found that the immense cost of installing and running hospital IT systems is greater than any expected cost savings. And much of the software being written for use in clinics is aimed at administrators, not doctors, nurses and lab workers.""The problem "is mainly that computer systems are built for the accountants and managers and not built to help doctors, nurses and patients," "So shouldn’t the article be more about how U.S hospitals need better software……I guess that wouldn’t get the article as much attention.
15. Oral
    12.13.2009

    Wow we can never leave the politics out of anything … I remember when Digg was all technology now it’s 90 percent ignorant trolls.
16. Tuve
    12.13.2009

    Speaking from experience the problem lately, as indicated in the article, is physician adoption of new technologies. Typically doctors in a hospital setting simply have no time to enter in data or they are fearful of a new system regardless of what it can do. Therefore hospital IT teams focused on how to better support and improve administrative tasks. However this is now changing with younger residents coming into the work place. They are willing to use computers because they’ve grown up with them. They understand that although it can take a little more time to enter information into a system, in the long run it is improving the quality of care for the patient – what the hospitals should be looking out for first.
17. Otis
    12.13.2009

    You would be surprised how much time is wasted by transcription staff who have to track down doctors to read their writing. While cliche it is very true! So while they may not be actually entering the data they are being paged away from patient care to make something legible. Why not use technology to do something right the first time?
18. Cairbre
    12.13.2009

    Now imagine having to deal with this "fuzzy" information through shady old paper records. It’s a nightmare for Residents. All we need is a bloody computer with the history typed in displayed on a screen than a damn old faded piece of paper with ink smears and incomprehensible letters.
19. Deon
    12.13.2009

    If there’s any question about efficacy, it’s not the computer’s fault. It’s the antiquated, inefficient manual systems that have been used for decades and decades and the administrative staff who are so accustomed to those systems that computers are more of a burden than second-nature.
20. Lupe
    12.13.2009

    I have worked on a bunch of hospital information systems.Some data is "fuzzy", like transcribed radiology reports. There is prosaic description of what is seen there. The images are not fuzzy, though, and these days you have both.Lab test & medicine order entry, patient admission/discharge data, billing – that is not "fuzzy" stuff. It’s pretty well defined numeric and coded data values (yes/no, date, status, amount, etc.).Characterizing hospital data as "fuzzy" is not correct, I think. Most of the data I have seen is not. It does take industry-specific knowledge to know the right way to structure, code, input, report it – and that is true of accounting data for non-hospital systems as well.Walmart’s IT system is very sophisticated and does a lot more than simple in stock inventory management. They have a lot of complex logistics to wring profits out of the economies of scale they deal with. Amazon is another company which is simple retailing. Their computers (not just the web facing side) are very complex/sophisticated too. There are many logistics and complexities there too, to do it profitably on such a grand scale.
21. Ruth
    12.13.2009

    When you look at profits, it has nothing to do with effectiveness at curing the patient. They are two independent things.Sure, it costs money to cure someone or save a life. But are profits proportional to that?Nope.
22. Huntley
    12.13.2009

    The last time a doctor wrote a prescription for me he gave me a piece of paper. I had to take this paper to the drug store. I had to wait at the drug store for a half an hour for them to fill the prescription. I do not see why there is not a program where the doctor just checks off what medicine I need and that is electronically sent to my drug store. I do not see the need for the doctor to take the time to write it on a piece of paper and than have it recorded on his computer. Why should I have to wait at the drug store when the prescription should have arrived there before I left the doctor’s office. I can not see how this would not save money for both the doctor and the patient.
23. Ulmer
    12.13.2009

    Hospitals are learning now what people in rest of the business world have known for years: 1) ERP systems make a few tasks easier for accountants and analysts at the expense of the entire company needing to input a ton of data in their daily work.2) They costs a ton of time and money to install, and that’s just the beginning. Upkeep isn’t cheap or easy.3) If the system goes down, everyone and everything grinds to a halt.4) That special case that sold you the system (patient arrives at the ER with unknown medical history, immediate access to magic data saves his life!) doesn’t occur quite as often as "nurse doesn’t know how to operate the system she wasn’t given training for, doesn’t log IV drip, patient gets a double dose of something.
24. Gulliver
    12.13.2009

    I think it’s rather a stupid finding. Computers do save hospital money. It’s more of how. For example, maybe it’s more accurate to say: "using the current computer technology and the current way it’s deployed at hospital, it doesn’t save money."However, if computers save many lives by improving accuracy and timely response to patient, that would help too.Installing computer in hospital doesn’t cost that much of money, depending on who you want them to do the installation. Just bring laptop there, with security lock. All have wireless. All computers have an identical image of the hard drive. Turn it on, and it just works (securely connected to the network).That may take 1 day. Write the software so that it’s very very easy to use, and a donkey can use it.Next, the network servers points to a centrally located computer system that is managed by a company that manages another 999 hospital, using an identical software, just different access code.That system is ofcourse replicated in many places, and run by the overlord Google ( /joke ). The data must be in an open format. The software must be open sourced. There must be government mandate of more than 1 companies providing this service for competition (split them if needed, or provide grant for more start up to join). The software must provide as a first class an export that can be readily import into another system, and it should just work.Beside computers, I would like to see rules and regulation put in place to constantly audit hospital performance and operation for efficiency. That also mean possible change of rules or laws so that they run better (not too much regulation, but no too little to cause carelessness).The principal behind cost cutting is auditing and force improvement (if there is a finding by a designated group to improve the efficiency of the hospital, the hospital is required to change to it in a certain amount of time).To further improve the process, there needs to be auditing for the audit people itself.
25. Riva
    12.13.2009

    You can’t trow computers into a system an expect to save money, if you don’t do a proper analysis and implementation they could even help you do wrong things faster.
26. Russom
    12.13.2009

    I can guarantee those will remain in our imagination.
27. Jaela
    12.13.2009

    . They may not have reasearch to support improved outcomes or saving money but they are not cheap and that will get passed on. One favorite way is to cut nurse staffing and that does hurt outcomes.
28. Caesarea
    12.13.2009

    Doctors dictate their case notes and they are transcribed. The only people that have to read what they write is their nurses who normally get to know their doctor’s writing.
29. Huey
    12.13.2009

    That would be true in doctor’s consulting rooms, but many hospitals use nurses or registrars who move from ward to ward, and agency nurses (temps), are also common in some places.
30. Oracle
    12.13.2009

    Truth. More time charting less in patient care. Charting on the computer can take so long that people just cant finish. This is common to nearly all the systems. There is a big enough Nursing and MD shortage already we dont need to waste their time on data entry.
31. Vivienne
    12.13.2009

    I work for a medical IT vendor so I have a few comments about costs:IT systems cost a lot. It costs a lot of money to purchase, to install to implement and to support the systems. The fascinating thing about these costs is that a lot of it can be reduced.Here are some examples :-The purchasing part:There are many instances where servers are purchased or components are purchased that are not needed because someone misinterpreted the specs. Usually at the vendor level. The installation part:There are some hospitals that don’t know how to utilize resources effectively or maintain quality.When a rack is not setup properly (i.e. crooked) or vendor requested site prep is not done, it takes a lot longer to do the job. There have been some instances where we would install HW on a rack only to have them move it to another rack because of they’re expanding their data centre or re-configuring their data centre which is fine by me, but please plan and coordinate, there is no need to have ppl do the same work 2x. The implementation part:Hospital system talk to each other using the HL7 standard, however the biggest joke of this standard is that its not a standard at all, but rather a guideline. Everyone has their own implementation of the standard. So instead of having things that can potentially be plug and play or just configured based on workflow, a whole line of testing that involves way too many people comes into play. The support part:A lot of times, the errors we encounter are because of faxing. Faxing is an outdated solution that way too many medical practitioners use. There are way too man man hours wasted troubleshooting this technology. Away with outdated technology I say.What a lot of vendors don’t do enough of is customer empowerment. Give the hospital staff the tools to properly monitor the operation of the systems. I’ve seen this being partially done, but it’s not done enough.Now the hard part; obviously IT costs a lot, but sometimes there is a reason why it doesn’t cut down costs significantly. Maybe some professions are getting paid way more than they need to. I understand we live in a capitalistic society, but how much is enough?
32. Istas
    12.13.2009

    Saving patients’ lives does not save hospitals money.Curing patients’ costs hospitals money if the rates they charge include a profit margin.
33. Cairo
    12.13.2009

    Theres been hundreds of millions of dollars cut from hospitals in certain states. Some hospitals cant even keep up with basic supplies. A lot of the ones in my area are still firing so many people just to stay alive they don’t have an option to go digital.
34. Valerie
    12.13.2009

    I think some doctor’s offices do ask which pharmacy you are going to pick up your prescription at when you are at the cashier/receptionist settling your bill. I think that saves a little time.
35. Fifi
    12.13.2009

    Well, things must suck until the nurses "get to know their doctor’s writing".
36. Padgett
    12.13.2009

    Well, the "Microsoft tax" keeps computer prices (for what you get) unnaturally high. In some hospitals the computers (PCs) are as sick as the patients: viruses, worms – sounds like a patient’s diagnosis, not the status of a healthcare computer (or computer-controlled diagnostic/therapy machine).The "Dell kickback" debacle further inflated PC prices that used Intel based computers. That also but AMD profits, which meant they had less money to spend on R&D and when they have the money, they do design improvements that really speed up computing power and reduce computer parts costs too. AMD, at least recovered some damages (from Intel, of all things). Dell, who actually received the billions in kickbacks could probably afford to give it up since they are still holding on to it.Google is working on making computers cheaper and a lot safer than Windows PCs. The added safeness reduces annual costs even lower. TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) of Windows PCs is really high. You have to buy antivirus software – and pay an annual subscription fee for it. Update it constantly, wait for slowness/pauses while it runs. Virus/worm removal is difficult to impossible in some situations. When the malware steals data their are fines. When the malware robs bank accounts, these days almost half the time the money cannot be recovered and the amounts stolen are in the tens of thousands of dollars – cyberthieves do not need to hide the thefts anymore.The trend is that computing is moving in two directions. One branch is getting less reliable and more expensive. The other branch is decreasing costs a little to a lot and is holding at a high level of safety and in some cases getting safer than that.Computers overall, the prices will not change much. But the difference will grow between unsafe/dangerous computers and safe/affordable computers. Things will improve in the next year or two. You can get very powerful turnkey servers (hw+sw) now for under $1000 (you supply kbd+mouse+monitor). That would have been unthinkable deal a year ago. The days of paying $50K for a server+seats+hardware are over.
37. Psyche
    12.13.2009

    I walked by an office in a hospital once. The door was open, and I happened to glance in. I saw three 30" or so monitors, portrait mode, side by side, and a doctor looking at x-rays. Technology is good, but that may have been a little overkill, even for me.
38. Ulf
    12.13.2009

    You sir, are retarded
39. Neka
    12.13.2009

    I suspect Obama’s "Evidence Based Medicine" philosophy will overlook this evidence as he seeks to spend huge amounts of taxpayer money on medical system automation.
40. Dennis
    12.13.2009

    Unlike accounting information, which is fairly standard and structured, medical information is veeerrrry fuzzy. Think of it this way, "an English composition essay (no structure)" versus "supermarket sales data (very structured)". Since the data is fundamentally unstructured, software engineers cannot hard code business processes into the system, which leads to incredibly expensive IT systems. IT helps supermarkets and Walmart many more times than it helps out doctors. Another way to look at it; sales people at walmart have a very simple job, mostly because the information (where are the pasta bags? etc) is very simple.Doctors have difficult jobs and have to have a lot of knowledge because of the wide variety of problems and situations they face. It is a very unstructured environment; each case is different.This analogy applies directly to the IT system problem.

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