New Report Projects Annual Interoperability Savings in Excess of $30 Billion
Achieving truly functional medical device interoperability could result in more than $30 billion a year in healthcare savings and significantly promote patient safety, according to a new report by a medical research organization.
The report —The Value of Medical Device Interoperability: Improving Patient Care with More Than $30 Billion in Annual Health Care Savings— was released by the West Health Institute, based in San Diego, CA., and comes at a time of increasing debate about the progress of interoperability, particularly as it relates to federal goals for the adoption and use of electronic health records (EHRs).
Like other reports on the state of healthcare delivery in the United States, the West Health report paints a picture of an increasingly costly system that is woefully out of step with advances in technology and communication. And the report hits on themes articulated at last fall’s AAMI-FDA Interoperability Summit—and summarized in an AAMI publication about that summit—including the need for commonly adopted standards and a need to align incentives. For example, in today’s market, manufacturers would be unlikely to see financial gains by making their devices interoperable.
Most of all, the West Health report emphasizes a host of benefits that can come from interoperability: increased efficiency, lower costs, and better quality of care driven by several factors, including a reduction of adverse events, better use of clinicians’ time, and shorter hospital stays.
“We see an enormous opportunity to use information technology and device innovation to bring about the much needed transformation in healthcare delivery,” said Joseph M. Smith, chief medical and science officer of the West Health Institute. “Today’s hospitals are filled with medical devices that are unable to share critical data, creating potential dangers to patients, as well as inefficiencies that put a tremendous financial burden on our healthcare system.”
The report calls on providers, payers, manufacturers, and the government to work together to promote interoperability, noting the challenges are too complex and interconnected for any one party to solve alone.
The report also makes note of the work of AAMI and other organizations to promote standardization as it relates to interoperability, but notes “no common approach has been adopted widely.”
The report concludes, “It is unlikely medical device and IT companies will proactively more towards standardized ‘plug-and-play’ device interoperability, and that providers may have the most significant burning platform for promoting medical device interoperability as a solution to the efficiency, capacity, and cost issues they are currently facing, supported by pressure from payers changing to more value-based payment models.”
To read the full report from the West Health Institute, click here.
Posted: March 29, 2013