Cutting Edge Issues
Internet-Enhanced Physician Practices

Deploying a PACS: Issues to consider

Application Service Provider PACS: Analyzing Costs of Service

eHealth:
Towards A New World of Communications in Medicine

Case Study Zone
St Paul Radiology Goes Filmless

Who is eMed?
Mission Statement
Customer Base
Partnerships
Product Offerings
Support Services

Internet-Enhanced Physician Practices

Part 2

THE NEED FOR CHANGE

The situation is dismal, and payors should be responding to it. The package-shipping industry has found it expedient to track the location of packages for many years; why shouldn’t this concept be applied to medical claims? Transparency and efficiency in the financial environment have become the norm. Why can’t we have them in health care?

Providers also need to make changes. The physician-patient encounter often results in no patient education whatsoever. Handwritten prescriptions and case notes can be illegible, resulting in errors. Appointments may be scheduled by hand, by only one individual in a practice, and their availability may be severely limited. This is no way to do business. Internet users book their own airline tickets; why can’t they also suggest or request their own appointment times?

The fact that there is so far to go in making health care efficient is a challenge, but it also represents an opportunity to change the 20-year to 30-year deficit in the way that information flows in health care. The Internet provides us with cost advantages by supplying the conduit for information, and the availability of web browsers adds to this free structure. Taking advantage of these is our best chance to change the way that health care works.

Today’s consumer priorities (1) are

• cost efficiency,
• choice,
• convenience,
• branding, and
• information.

Consumers want to be able to find their own physicians, and today’s provider directories are simply inadequate. They need intelligent choice, with a means of choosing physicians who are in accord with their philosophies for managing their own care. People want control over their lives, and they want convenience. There is probably no environment that is less customer-service oriented than health care. We simply do not have customer service in health care, from scheduling through billing.

Reference
Institute for the Future. The 21st Century Health Care Consumer. Menlo Park, Calif: IFTF; 1998.