During this week’s National Health IT Week, HIMSS released a report that summarizes the findings from 25 years of their annual Health IT Leadership survey. The report includes responses from over 12,700 hospital and health system leaders from 1990-2014. History tends to repeat itself and the report reveals that historical concerns still ring true today including:
– 1991- 75% say their institution’s financial health is helped by computers
– 1994 – 14% predict that digital patient information will be shared nationwide in 1-3 years
– 2000 – 70% of respondents say HIPAA (patient privacy) is a top business issue
– 2014 – The optimism surrounding Stage 2 continued with 71 percent of respondents indicating they would attest for Meaningful Use Stage 2 by the end of 2014 and another 19 percent expecting to do the same in 2015.
To accompany the report, HIMSS has created a new infographic illustrating the finding below:
Conclusion
The healthcare industry has experienced a number of significant events during the past twenty-five years. In the early 1990s, healthcare organizations closely watched the Clinton administration’s attempts to reform healthcare. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the industry had turned its attention to Y2K and HIPAA, the latter having significant ramifications for electronic data integrity, privacy and security. With the passage of ARRA (2009) and the Affordable Care Act (2010), the industry became pre-occupied with the most concentrated effort to modify the delivery of care in the United States this nation has ever seen.
With much of the aforementioned legislative efforts during this 25 period designed to manage spiraling healthcare costs and improve the quality of care delivered, it’s notable to observe the increased reliance healthcare leaders placed on information technology. While much of the early HIT efforts revolved around financial and operational systems, the more recent focus on HIT has shifted towards clinical applications. This shift is perhaps best illustrated in the accelerated adoption of EHRs during the late 2000s and 2010s, spurred on by Meaningful Use.
Data from the most recent Leadership surveys also suggest healthcare organizations are most likely going to turn their attention to value based purchasing (VBP). For information on this HIMSS report, visit http://www.himssanalytics.org/research/AssetDetail.aspx?pubid=82177&tid=127
