Information Technology for Doctors Healthcare

Information technology has a lot of potential to improve the efficiency, safety, and services of doctors’ healthcare. President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, provides $12.4 billion dollars between 2009 until 2019 for the use of information technology in the healthcare industry. The benefits of implementing IT in doctors’ healthcare are varied, and include lower health insurance premiums, efficient payment collection, and quality gains in healthcare services. However, there may be some consequences if the policies for stimulating IT use are not carefully reviewed.

What is Information Technology and How Will it Affect Doctors’ Healthcare?

In general, information technology allows doctors and other health care professionals to store, collect, and recover data through electronic means. But due to the ever-changing landscape of technology, information technology for healthcare providers now means many things to many professionals. For instance, it can now be used for inter-hospital communication to reduce handwritten communication, as a passive tool for storing patient records, or for aiding diagnosis.

Before purchasing any information technology, you must consider the various functions and the hundreds of programs available from vendors today. Generally speaking, information technology for doctors’ healthcare falls into three main types:

• Administrative systems designed to expedite administrative work like accounting, billing, and inventory-keeping
• Clinical programs that assist the care process
• Infrastructure devices that support administrative systems and clinical programs

The Costs of Information Technology

There’s no doubt that IT has the potential to bring multiple benefits to doctors and their practices. However, there are some drawbacks. The cost of investing in IT can be great, and financial returns are uncertain. Smaller doctors’ healthcare practices might have a hard time maintaining the financial costs of an IT system. For instance, the average cost of an electronic health record system ranges from $16,000 - $36,000. Even if money is not an issue, the time it will take to learn to use and implement this technology make some doctors uncertain about making the IT switch. Besides this, doctors will also need to make major changes to their office workflow, and will need to take time away from their patients to learn to adapt and use these systems.

A Question of Standards

As of now, the issue of information technology for doctors’ healthcare has become an issue of standards. In order for IT to be rooted in the healthcare industry and bring doctors, hospitals, specialists, and insurance companies together, IT providers and programs have to speak one technical language. If medical terminology, diagnostics, and disease reports have their own standards, so should the technology that doctors use. There are currently several organizations developing standards for healthcare information technology, and it may take some time for them to create a consistent set of standards.

The Bottom Line

Whatever concerns healthcare professionals might have about IT, it is important that all doctors be aware of the benefits technology can provide for their practices. IT can help doctors’ healthcare reduce costs associated with storing medical records and doing administrative tasks manually. For the right information technology solutions to emerge, however, doctors also have to be honest about what programs work, what their needs are, and to consider other solutions besides technology.