Connected Healthcare Will Drive Global Change in 2013

Driven by new technology, patient-centered connected healthcare will help people worldwide receive better and more cost-efficient treatment and care, said one of Accenture’s top healthcare consultants.

Rick Ratliff, Accenture’s senior executive of health and public service, speaking at the recent Healthcare IT Summit, disclosed the results of a massive global study on connected healthcare that delved into such global trends as the aging population, a decrease in fitness, and increased incidence of chronic and lifestyle disease.

“At the end of the day, it’s important that the technology supports access to the information at every phase of patient care, and that there is an ability for a single view of patient information to provide all those who are involved in the care with a common view of the patient’s information for fully expedited and coordinated care,” said Ratliff.

He disclosed the findings of Accenture’s study of 3,700 physicians and 160 healthcare experts worldwide that examined connected health, healthcare IT adoption, health information exchanges and insight-driven healthcare.

“We need to digitize healthcare with electronic medical records, and we need to make sure that it’s digitized in a certain way that will allow us to use that information to manage workflow to improve overall healthcare,” said Ratliff. “We, then, need to exchange that data among hospitals, physicians, payer organizations and patients, and use analytics to assess the care, find the gaps and change the behavior of the healthcare system.”

Right now, primary care organizations in Spain and England are leading in the areas of healthcare IT adoption and health information exchange, followed by the U.S. Secondary, or specialist, care organizations in Spain and the U.S. are leading in those areas, with Singapore following very close behind, according to Accenture’s research.

“Here in the U.S., the HITECH Act is driving significant adoption of electronic medical records and we are starting to see slow growth in health information exchange, but there is still a long way to go,” said Ratliff.

The main reason why many countries are falling behind with technology-driven connected healthcare is because of cost. “In addition to cost, there is concern about privacy and lack of interoperability standards, and there is a lack of incentives to drive adoption and utilization of electronic medical records. These issues are seen consistently across the world,” said Ratliff.

According to the survey, only one in five physicians receive incentives for managing patients with chronic conditions while less than 20 percent have incentives for achieving quality measures and only 10 percent have motivation for coordinating care with other organizations.

In the U.S. today, approximately two-thirds of physicians have an electronic medical record system in place, and the U.S. is doing well in using EMRs to capture information during exams, however, there is not as much uptake on the exchange of information. Only about 16 percent of primary care physicians who responded to the survey are doing some level of communication, and about 24 percent of secondary care physicians are communicating via HIEs.

“We are still seeing a lot more progress in the U.S. than we are seeing in some other countries around the world regarding HIE and the use of electronic medical records for connected healthcare, and I am confident that progress will only grow over the next few years,” said Ratliff.