The Future of IT-Enabled Healthcare
The future of IT-enabled healthcare faces several key issues, said Vi Shaffer, a Gartner research vice president and global industry services director for healthcare.
The issues include the critical uncertainties and market drivers that will define 2019 healthcare, the possible scenarios for the future and how IT will contribute, and the actions healthcare delivery organizations and IT leaders should take to best prepare.
Ms. Shaffer labeled one quadrant in the healthcare matrix as “herky-jerky care” in which care delivery occurs mostly in face-to-face encounters, as happens today. “Payment will still be mostly based on activities rather than value, forcing CDOs to optimize numerous patient-physician interactions based on economic factors,” she said.
Another quadrant is labeled “convenient care” in which care delivery is more virtual, but remains activity-based. “Consumers must coordinate their interactions with multiple providers, with minimal information on the quality of that care,” she said.
Ms. Shaffer described a third quadrant as “centered care” in which care delivery is value-based, but still physically present. “CDO IT priorities would focus on streamlining the care process to ensure that clinicians can optimize their time with patients, and on providing tools to better understand patient wants and needs,” she said.
Finally, there is the quadrant called “continuous care” in which she said care delivery has become more virtual, and provider incentives more value-based. Patients are less tied to local practitioners because more care is handled remotely, and patients can make more-informed decisions because more provider quality data is available in a way that supports their ability to make good decisions.
Ms. Shaffer said the proposed U.S. healthcare reform is predicated on the existence of an advanced healthcare IT infrastructure for hospitals and physician practices that enables interoperability, “meaningful use” and the ability to feed data for clinical effectiveness evaluation and research.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the $787 billion U.S. economic stimulus plan signed into law by President Obama on 17 February 2009, is estimated to provide more than $30 billion in direct incentives for physicians to use e-health records (EHRs) and additional indirect incentives and grants to support the effort.
By Alan Quale, Gartner
Filed under: Sessions
