IT & Healthcare in NYC

On March 28, $105 million in grants were awarded to 19 leading community-based health IT projects (NY State Gov). New York currently leads the U.S. in their commitment to move from paper based to electronic based systems. Officials would like to see this money used to provide more patient-centered care.

New York, in my own opinion, is by far the leading to state to take advantage of technology and use it to increase efficiency, safety, opportunities, and effectiveness in various applications such as emergency preparedness, public official stationing, and knowledge management. However, health care is an application in which, across the country, cities and states have struggled to incorporate technology and have consistently failed. And New York is not an exception.

One of my family members has worked in various jobs related to health management over the past 5 or 6 years. I have seen him continuously switch jobs, never quite fond of the bureaucratic nature of the the company. Yet this bureaucracy is a major reason why the incorporation of IT continues to fail. People hate change. People love consistency and organization. And someone is always in charge saying,"Why change now?". Well change now, or healthcare will never experience the power that IT has to offer.

I read a crazy statistic: "The U.S. spends twice as much per capita on healthcare as the average of the 10 other richest countries in the world" (Brookings). So what exactly are we spending all of this extra money on then? Wasted IT investments?

And from this same article, I have come across some very interesting points about why IT in healthcare (reform) has consistently failed:

• "Eighty-five percent of Americans are insured and fear change"
• "Large-scale health reform is large-scale income redistribution, and the politics of redistribution is the politics of trench warfare"
• "Healthcare reform involves huge financial stakes" (the $105 million should hopefully make this point obsolete)
• "The U.S. political system is exquisitely structured to frustrate action on large and controversial matters on which there is not overwhelming agreement"
• "Healthcare varies greatly across the United States, making consensus hard to come by"

I now plan to research how IT can actually achieve the healthcare reform, while still taking into consideration the above points. In my next posting, I will provide what I have come up with...