Is Innovation the Answer?

From innovation officers and centers to innovation grants and awards, innovation certainly seems to be front and center in the healthcare industry.

But is innovation a trend or the future for healthcare? When you dig a little deeper, as I did for this month’s cover story on innovations in cardiac patient care, you’ll find that advances in EHRs, information sharing, patient engagement and more are converging and showing improved patient outcomes and reduced costs.

The new penalties for unnecessary hospital readmissions are putting more and more pressure on these innovations for results. Calls for better care coordination are driving health information exchange, data analytics and mobile health efforts. For more on this, see the article.

Clearly, any innovation requires much work on the back end and not just adding the word “innovation.” Marshall D. Ruffin, Jr., MD, MBA, MPH, chief technology officer of Inova Health System, speaking about how facilities are managing health IT mandates, said we cannot systematically innovate until healthcare organizations standardize the language they use to deliver care, analyze finances and assess technology.

Standardizing language by all using lexicons such as SNOMED, LOINC and NDC codes sounds “dry and boring but if you don’t do that you can’t compare physical exam findings, lab results and medications reliably.” A lot of discipline goes into that standardization in a “common enterprise architecture” manner, Ruffin acknowledges. That is what allows for innovation, he says. “Just bringing on an innovation officer will lead to failure. It’s a waste of time.”

Most healthcare organizations don’t understand the degree to which standardization is essential, Ruffin says, and that has to change. “You don’t have to create a chief innovation officer position to have innovation.” Read more on Ruffin and Inova’s efforts to standardize to drive innovation.

Also this month, providers in three states explain how they achieved the highest rates for electronic prescribing and learn more about the potential for financial sustainability for health information exchanges.

There’s little doubt you’re feeling the pressure to innovate, however that plays out at your facility. Have you created an innovation officer role or joined an accountable care organization or implemented a personal health record? We’ll have more on these trends with the results of our 2013 Health IT Leadership Survey next month.