CAMBRIDGE, MA – Economically healthy industries empower workers to make decisions, compensate based on productivity and use a lot of information technology. The healthcare industry doesn’t do any of this – yet.
Stimulus funds for IT could save the day and the economy, according to Harvard economics professor and Obama campaign advisor David Cutler, who spoke at the Tuesday afternoon session of the HIT Symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Every industry except healthcare has figured out how to become more efficient by replacing administrative work with information technology, he said. Nurses spend a third of their time documenting – a procedure Cutler said often involves printing digitized information and re-entering it into another IT system.
With the right IT systems and processes, he said, the business of healthcare could change to focus more on compensation and empowerment, making hospitals and practices more profitable.
Cutler said the promise of electronic medical records lies in three areas that can greatly improve the economic health of a hospital: More Here EMR