McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting Q&A with Hal Wolf, COO of the Permanente Foundation, the umbrella organization for Kaiser Permanente’s medical groups, highlighting some of the unintended positive consequences of integrated information technology. Says Wolf:
Our IT system was originally designed to provide information about individual patients, but our physicians quickly realized that real value could be derived from aggregating the patient data into disease registries. Cardiovascular disease and diabetes were among the first registries we created. Today, we have more than 50 registries. These registries enable all team members to determine how well their patients are doing in comparison with other KP patients, as well as how well their patients’ outcomes stack up against national and international benchmarks.
When we started these registries, we began by tracking outcomes and co-morbidities. Over time, however, the registries have grown more sophisticated. We can now determine how even small changes in care pathways can have a significant impact on outcomes, and we can study patients with specific combinations of co-morbidities to identify the best treatment approaches for them.
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July 15, 2009 at 9:50 am
This is the future of health care. With the health care companies having to watch every dollar very close, they are looking for new ways to safe money. Most companies if they haven’t already will look at this like they looked at health club memberships and see that being proactive in health care management is better than being reactive.
The technology is out there that companies can use to do the same thing the Kaiser is doing for pennies a day.