I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts about http://www.computerworld.com/newsletter/0,4902,104195,0.html?nlid=AM
Network Effect Opinion by Frank Hayes AUGUST 29, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - "I work for a hospital management company in the Midwest that works with 30 very small rural community hospitals. Not one of our hospitals is ready for electronic health records. They are not even close to giving up paper. I guarantee you there are more hospitals that do not have EHR than those that do." This network manager who wrote to me is right. When I said a few weeks back [QuickLink 55837] that "hospitals have made the transition over the past decade" to EHR, I was wrong. True, many large health care organizations have put EHR in place. But the rest of the health care world has a big challenge ahead. Wait, check that: A better way to say it is that because many doctors and small hospitals aren't using EHR, everyone in health care faces a big challenge. Why? It's the network effect. Remember Metcalfe's Law: The more users who can communicate with one another on a network, the more valuable the network is. Sure, EHR can save some money internally for each organization that implements it. But the big value comes when lots of organizations can exchange medical records efficiently. And the lack of widespread use of EHR actually adds cost for organizations that use it. Every time one of those small community hospitals sends a patient to a big health care organization with actual paperwork, that paper has to be converted to electronic records. Then the EHR has to be printed on paper again for the patient's file when he goes back home. That means we can't treat EHR as a competitive advantage that we keep for ourselves. We have to spread it around as widely as possible. Otherwise we can't realize the biggest benefits -- including the largest cost savings. That's not unique to EHR. For example, no company can get maximum advantage alone from RFID; everyone on the supply chain has to use it. And Internet retailing only works when all customers and suppliers use the same Web protocols. But that's not the way we're used to thinking about IT's benefits. And it's not the way we usually sell new IT initiatives to top management. It's one thing to say, "We need to adopt this technology to get an advantage over the rest of our industry." It's quite another to argue, "We need to get the rest of our industry to adopt this technology so we can maximize our benefit from it." In the case of EHR, it's especially sticky: These are patients, not products, so there's no chance of a Wal-Mart-style "adopt this or we won't buy from you" ultimatum. But big health care organizations still have a big interest in getting small hospitals, clinics and medical practices on board with EHR. It's the only way to get a big-time payback from their own EHR spending. Making that happen won't be easy. The costs of software, hardware, implementation, training and running the systems aren't trivial. Distributing less-expensive EHR software like Vista-Office is a start, but more will need to be done. For big health care players, will that mean contributing improvements to the Vista-Office software? Partnering with small hospitals to train IT and medical staff? Donating equipment? Lobbying for the health care equivalent of the Rural Electrification Act? I don't know. But short of a real push, big health care organizations won't get the ROI they want from EHR. And as that network-manager reader put it, "those that do not have EHR will not be ready in the next few years -- or the next 10 years." Incidentally, in response to readers who asked where to find Vista-Office EHR and the open-source OpenVista, try the Vista-Office Web site (www.vista-office.org) and WorldVista (www.worldvista.org). OpenVista is available now; Vista-Office EHR is still scheduled to be out this month. Frank Hayes, Computerworld's senior news columnist, has covered IT for more than 20 years. Contact him at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices Agile & Plan-Driven Development * Managing Projects & Teams * Testing & QA Security * Process Improvement & Measurement * http://www.sqe.com/bsce5sf _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list Hardhats-members@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
