IOM calls for more technology in healthcare
Technology hold the keys to addressing an increasingly complicated healthcare system plagued by inefficiency, high costs, and poor quality, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said in a recent report.
In the report, "Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America," an 18-member expert panel argues for a set of improvement strategies that panel members say will make information more accessible, engage patients and their families, and make care more equitable. Those changes, which the committee referred to as a roadmap, include increased adoption of health information technology, increased connectivity, use of new payment models, and a re-engineering of healthcare systems.
"Missed opportunities for better healthcare have real human and economic impacts," the committee said in the report. "If the care in every state were of the quality delivered by the highest-performing state, an estimated 75,000 fewer deaths would have occurred across the country in 2005. Current waste diverts resources from productive use, resulting in an estimated $750 billion loss in 2009."
The report comes more than a decade after the release of To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, companion reports that sounded the alarm about preventable harm and poor performance. But poorly designed systems, lack of information at the point of care, and an entrenched culture have hindered large-scale improvement, the committee said.
"Available knowledge is too rarely applied to improve the care experience, and information generated by the care experience is too rarely gathered to improve the knowledge available," the report said. "The traditional systems for transmitting new knowledge the ways clinicians are educated, deployed, rewarded, and updated can no longer keep pace with scientific advances. If unaddressed, the current shortfalls in the performance of the nation's healthcare system will deepen on both quality and cost dimensions, challenging the well-being of Americans now and potentially far into the future."
A free download of the full report is available at http://tinyurl.com/IOMtechreport.
Technology hold the keys to addressing an increasingly complicated healthcare system plagued by inefficiency, high costs, and poor quality, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) said in a recent report.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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