Adam Bosworth spoke at the TEPR Conference today about how President Obama can best spend the $50 billion that will be available when the stimulus package is signed. Mr. Bosworth, one of the founders of Google Health, left Google in 2007 to create his own health IT company, Keas. 

Even though he has a long history as a techie (he worked at Microsoft before Google), he believes money could be better spent, not on IT, but on providing incentives for patients and doctors to work together to create health plans for healthy lifestyles. He believes that the U.S. has become sicker over the last 20 years due to unhealthy lifestyles which contribute to skyrocketing rates of obesity and the long list of illnesses that go along with that. 

However, not surprisingly, my three favorite points of Mr. Bosworth's talk had to do with IT:

1.    Information Technology Saves Money 

In every industry that has adopted IT, most have realized cost savings by shifting business activities to the consumer.

For instance, banks save money when customers get money from an ATM instead of a bank teller. Airlines save money when travelers print boarding passes at home instead of using a gate agent.

Physician practices can see the same benefits by enlisting patients to do some of the work now done by their overworked staff. Allow patients to register with your patient management system online and allow them to update it when their insurance or demographic information changes. In fact, studies show that patients would like to be more involved electronically. Read more about that in my post about what patients want.


 

2.  Do not spend government money on developing “standards”

Standards are not developed by government fiat, but by financial motivation. The best standards are easy; if standards are difficult to use then they will be harder to implement because fewer people will be able to implement them. For example, html was widely adopted as a standard because it is so easy that even non-programmers can use it. In healthcare, the CCR (Continuity of Care Record) is quite sufficient for interoperability, because it is so straightforward and easy.

3.  Doctors should not run IT departments

The only hardware a physician office needs is a monitor that can run a web browser. Systems that are accessed through the internet have a distinct advantage over those that are housed on-site in terms of back-up and new releases. One doctor at the conference related a story where his paperless office had a server crash and he was not able to recover any data for six weeks. Horror stories like this are far less likely to happen if you are using a browser based system.