Cutting Edge Issues

eHealth:
Towards A New World of Communications in Medicine

Case Study: Overlake Hospital Medical Center

Information on Demand: Consumer-Controlled Medical Records

Finding Leaders for Internet Health Care

Building the Security-Capable Enterprise

Planning Business Strategies with Internet Support

Internet Use as a Survival Strategy

Case Study Zone

Who is eMed?

Internet Use as a Survival Strategy

Part 4

One of the difficulties that we have encountered in the course of this project is that much of the information technology on the market is intended primarily for other uses. In cases where a product or service is aimed at physicians, it is typically intended for what I can only call the old market: physicians as independent practitioners. Organizations of physicians constitute the new market, but this future market is still in its infancy.

Over the past 3 years, information technology at Hill Physicians has really taken on a life of its own. More than that, consideration of it has crept into everything that the organization does. Our spending has changed in its favor, and those changes are going to accelerate over the next 2 years. We are becoming dominated by information systems, and we are experiencing significant reductions in the cost of claims processing as a result. All other administrative costs will start to decrease, as well.

Our web site was established in 1997, primarily for providers to access eligibility and authorization data; as an afterthought, we provided health-related information. In November 1999, we determined that our providers would be connected to us, and to each other, via commercial portal. The consumer information that was originally an afterthought then became the primary purpose of the Hill Physicians web site.

CONCLUSION

The Internet is not going away. We will continue to pursue all aspects of ehealth and e-commerce, but the electronic medical record is the last item on our agenda, not the first. We do see it as likely to improve reporting and analysis capabilities, and we continue to anticipate it by creating standards and increasing the deployment of information technology. Standardization is a challenge, however, because the 1,600 offices of this IPA run their practices differently.

While our physicians may not yet be telling patients, “Take two aspirins and email me in the morning,” our compensation plan is intended to encourage them to accept email as, at the very least, an effective means of communicating with the patient.

Steve McDermott is president and CEO, Hill Physicians Medical Group, San Ramon, Calif, the largest independent practice association in the United States, and chair of PriMed, a physician group management company. This article has been excerpted from IPA/Medical Group Case Study: The Internet Is a Survival Strategy in Managed-Care–Intensive Markets, which he presented at The Symposium of E-Healthcare Strategies for Physicians, Hospitals & Integrated Delivery Systems, on June 27, 2000, in San Francisco