• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Doctors and Patients Agree: Utilizing Information Technology Improves Health Care Quality and Efficiency

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 12:00 CDT

Incorporating information technology into medical practices will improve the quality of health care, both health-care providers and patients widely believe, according to new comprehensive national surveys.

Eighty-six percent of U.S. physicians surveyed said that a health-care system that adopted information technology such as electronic health records would improve the quality of health care patients receive. In addition, 79 percent of patients also believe that, according to national surveys commissioned by the Technology CEO Council.

Providers and patients also agree that the health-care system is in need of major changes. Seventy-six percent of physicians believe that the system is in need of major reforms, while 65 percent of patients responded that major reforms are necessary.

The survey also found that patients waste considerable time filling out medical paperwork. On average, patients spend an average of 10 minutes filling out forms per visit. Given the more than 800 million doctor visits a year, more than 135 million hours are spent a year filling out medical forms. To put that in perspective, that's the total hours worked each year by a workforce of more than 60,000 people.

This issue touches millions of Americans, as approximately 77 million people transferred their medical records between health care professionals in the past three years. These people say it took an average of six days to transfer or share their records. As well, approximately 18 million adults have experienced a delay in medical treatment because the health care provider had to wait for their medical records, and 16 million Americans have had to have a duplicate medical test or evaluation conducted in the last two or three years because their health care provider did not have the necessary medical records.

There is a major national effort currently underway to modernize health-care by implementing networking technology that enables patient medical history to be electronically available to their doctors. The Bush Administration has taken a leadership role in driving standards to ensure that records are interoperable and Congress is weighing legislation to provide incentives to implement information technology.

Health-care providers saw widespread benefits to implementing health care IT:

-- Enable them to better respond to a patient's medical needs: 86 percent.

-- Make them more efficient and be able to see more patients: 78 percent.

-- Improve their knowledge of best practices: 76 percent.

-- Enable them to comply with reporting requirements: 82 percent.

Looking specifically at prescriptions, 85 percent of providers responded that errors would be reduced if prescriptions were delivered via a typed electronic format. That is not a surprising number given that other studies have found that more than 150 million phone calls are made a year between a doctor and pharmacist clarifying a handwritten prescription.

With a response of 76 percent, providers thought the biggest impediment was the high-cost of implementation. Perhaps for that reason, 82 percent support the Federal Government providing some funding to begin the process of building an electronic health record system.

Adults surveyed reported that electronic health information would improve their health care experience:

-- Lead to fewer medical errors: 83 percent.

-- Provide immediate access to their health records in an emergency: 93 percent.

-- Cut down on the amount of paperwork: 76 percent.

-- Enable patients to be treated more efficiently: 82 percent.

Among specific treatment innovations enabled by health care IT, 63 percent of those surveyed thought it would help remotely monitor health conditions such as heart issues or high-blood pressure while 53 percent said it enable at-home testing of medical conditions such as blood glucose or cholesterol without visiting a health-care provider.

"It is clear that both health-care providers and the people they treat believe that upgrading our current system of paper files for an electronic system that enables the sharing of medical information will vastly improve patient care and doctor efficiency while transforming our approach to health-care," said Bruce Mehlman, Executive Director of the Technology CEO Council. "We intend to share these results with policymakers and leaders in the health-care community who are grappling with the challenging task of upgrading our health-care system through the adoption of information technology."

The surveys were conducted by Public Opinion Strategies. The survey of patients polled 800 adults the week of Sept. 22, 2005 and had a margin of error of 3.46 percent. The survey of physicians was conducted the week of Sept. 29, 2005 and polled 203 general/family practice, emergency, internal medicine and pediatricians and had a margin of error of 6.89 percent.

Members of the Technology CEO Council include its Chairman, Craig R. Barrett, Chairman of the Board of Intel; Mark V. Hurd, President and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Company; Joseph McGrath, President and CEO of Unisys Corporation; William Nuti, President and CEO of NCR Corporation; Samuel J. Palmisano, Chairman and CEO of IBM Corporation; Kevin B. Rollins, President and CEO of Dell Inc.; Michael R. Splinter, President and CEO of Applied Materials, Inc.; Joseph M. Tucci, President and CEO of EMC Corporation; and Ed Zander, Chairman and CEO of Motorola, Inc.

About the Technology CEO Council

The Technology CEO Council is a CEO policy advocacy group focused on ensuring U.S. competitiveness through technology leadership. The CEOs visit Washington twice annually to meet with lawmakers about policy issues of importance to the high-tech industry and work throughout the year to promote education, analysis and recommendations. For more information, please visit www.techceocouncil.org.

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category