Technology is at the Heart of Keeping Patients Safe
First Published Thursday, 12th April 2012 02:30 pm from TIBCO Software : Dave Chamberlain
The opinions expressed by this blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone, this does not reflect the opinion of Automated Trader or any employee thereof. Automated Trader is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by this article.
src="http://www.thetibcoblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/A_stethoscope_and_mouse_A5NTA0.jpg"
alt="" width="370" height="288" />Health Insurance Exchanges
(HIX) were supposed to be a cornerstone of the Patient Protection
and Affordable Healthcare Act of 2010, providing a way for
individuals and groups to shop around and get affordable
healthcare. Federal law mandates every state has to have a fully
operational HIX in less than two years time. The act is designed
to reduce overall spending on healthcare and raise taxation in a
variety of ways by more than $400 billion over the first 10
years. To date, the federal government has awarded over href="http://www.govhealthit.com/news/13-us-states-garner-hhs-funds-hix">$220
million to help the first 13 states design, build, and
go live with their HIX, and over $600 million
altogether.
So far so good, it seems. Reduce
costs by introducing competition and provide more affordable
healthcare for all-sounds great, right? Here's the rub: Chaos
abounds-as reported in the href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/health/policy/a-wait-and-see-approach-for-states-on-insurance-exchanges.html">New
York Times. States are taking a wait-and-see attitude
for the results of the Supreme Court decision due over the summer
and also for the results of the November 2011 general elections.
On January 1, 2013, Obama will decide which states are advanced
enough to run their own HIX, and which will be run by the federal
government. Some states have backtracked. According to the New
York Times article dated February
27:
"Wisconsin began planning an exchange
last year under an executive order issued by Gov. Scott Walker, a
Republican. But he repealed his own order last month and told
state officials to stop work on the
exchange."
One has to wonder: where does this leave the country,
the states, and individuals? Information technology will be the
backbone of every exchange. The complexity of the computer
systems needed to verify eligibility, enroll consumers, calculate
subsidies and connect the exchange to state
agencies has slowed work in some states. To date, hundreds of
millions of dollars have been spent on engaging consultants,
designing, building, and testing systems, with more hundreds of
millions-if not billions-still be to spent. Is this all money
down the drain?
What lessons can we all learn
from this? To me, it's simple. The Affordable Healthcare Act
really represents a need of a business to do things differently.
This can translate to any organization, not just healthcare. If
you mapped out your our own organization's need to react to a
requirement of change-since that's what IT is really all about,
enabling change-you would need to begin with an understanding of
what changes are needed: Ensure stakeholders are in agreement and
the project is funded; Gather business requirements and how they
map to new or updated business processes; Determine what internal
and external integration is needed; Pick the href="http://www.tibco.com">right technologies to
get the project live on time, on budget; And of course, we need
to meet (hopefully exceed) the overall business requirements,
which means we have to have built-in analytics.
No related
posts.
