Thanks to a tip from my colleague Beth Jenkins, I enthusiastically read The Harvard Business Review’s List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2010. The entire article is a nice, quick read that will get you thinking about a wide variety of issues – from how we can better license technology to manage people to financing energy alternatives. I immediately focused on the second idea on the list, “The Technology That Can Revolutionize Health Care”.
The author is Dr. Ronald Dixon, Director of Virtual Practice Management at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA shows how simple things like phone calls and email can have a dramatic effect on the care of patients – making it better, easier and ultimately cheaper.
While reading the piece, I was relieved to read his perspective – he knows that these tools can be very effective, but must wait until the rules change in order to fully capitalize on the system. The two main barriers -- a hospital’s need to be able to charge a fee for a doctor’s time (emailing, calling, etc.) and the inability of information from emails between a patient and doctor cannot be included in the patient’s health record – are significant. However, the examples of how these tools can really make a difference in a person’s care are significant.
