The Digital Hospital

By Roland Piquepaille

BusinessWeek's cover story looks at the future of health care from a business point of view. And the magazine tries to answer at how high-tech can save lives and money. For BusinessWeek, 'productivity' in health-care declined during the 1990s, but is starting to rebound, partially because of a massive investment of about $30 billion in information technology in 2005 alone by U.S. hospitals. Not only this is saving money by better managing patients and reducing the length of their stays in hospitals, this investment is also saving lives. Lots of them! It is estimated that "hospital errors result in up to 98,000 deaths annually," including 7,000 just by missing drug-interaction problems. Amazing numbers, isn't? Read more...

BusinessWeek has used the example of the Hackensack University Medical Center to check if it was defining the future of health care. Here is a short description of what's going up there.

Hackensack is one of the nation's most aggressive tech adopters. Millions of dollars in investments have paid for projects well beyond the online drug system that tipped off Gross. Doctors can tap an internal Web site to examine X-rays from a PC anywhere. Patients can use 37-inch plasma TVs in their rooms to surf the Net for information about their medical conditions. There's even a life-size robot, Mr. Rounder, that doctors can control from their laptops at home. They direct the digital doc, complete with white lab coat and stethoscope, into hospital rooms and use two-way video to discuss patients' conditions.

There are currently thirty-five Mr. Rounders in hospitals in the U.S. You can rent one for $4,000 a month, or buy them for $120,000 a piece. For more information about Mr. Rounder, you can check the following resources:

Now, let's go back at the question of the health-care future.

Hospitals such as Hackensack, along with insurers and the government, are stepping up their investments in technology. For hospitals, there's more motivation than ever: The government and private insurers are beginning to pay hospitals more for higher-quality care -- and the only way to measure quality, and then improve it, is with more information technology. Hospital spending on such gear is expected to climb to $30.5 billion next year, from $25.8 billion in 2004, according to researcher Dorenfest Group.

Investing more dollars is one thing, but how do you measure 'improved productivity' in health-care? One thing is to look at financial results. And investments -- and commitments by all nurses and doctors -- have raised Hackensack's operating margins, to 3.1% last year from 1.2% in 2000.

But besides the business case, hospitals are here to save lives. And BusinessWeek comes up with pretty staggering numbers.

Poor information kills some 7,000 Americans each year just by missing drug-interaction problems, according to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. All together, hospital errors result in up to 98,000 deaths annually. Early evidence indicates that proper technology can reduce the toll. Hospitals that have begun using electronic prescription systems have seen up to 80% fewer prescription errors. And at Hackensack, patient mortality has dropped by 16% over the past four years, in part because of its digital initiatives.

Pretty impressive, don't you think?

As this post starts to be a little bit longer, let's jump to a couple of conclusions.

Hackensack offers clear lessons for other hospitals. Making technology pay takes time. It can be several years before the results of initiatives begin to surface. Just as important, making the technology work well takes a huge amount of effort. Hackensack's central software system is constantly being tweaked to ensure that it's woven into the routine of the medical staff.
Most important, doctors remain the key to hospitals' success. Wooing them is an extremely delicate task. Only 7% of doctors actually work for hospitals. The others are essentially independent operators who are not required to do what hospital administrators want. Many are wary of gadgets that take extra time or interfere with their work. But they aren't Luddites. Most are willing to experiment with new technology.

Please read this whole report, preferably the print edition because it will bring some money to BusinessWeek, which will be able to do more of these reports in the future. On the other hand, the online version has some extra articles. So read both.

[Final note: I'm not affiliated in any way with BusinessWeek or with any of the companies of the McGraw-Hill group, owner of BusinessWeek.]

Sources: Timothy J. Mullaney and Arlene Weintraub, BusinessWeek Magazine, Cover Story, March 28, 2005 Issue; and various websites

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Famous quotes containing the word hospital:

    “For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.”
    —Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)