Report: Data remain constant throughout health IT change

Research firm Health Research Institute (HRI) surveyed more than 600 provider, health insurer and pharmaceutical/life science professionals to produce its white paper on the state of clinical informatics, Needles in a Haystack: Seeking Knowledge with Clinical Informatics.

“Outcomes-based reimbursement is the future of the heath industry,” read the February report. “To improve patient outcomes, proactively identify chronic and high-risk patients in this new environment, and effectively manage their financial performance, healthcare organizations must be able to provide analytics at the point of service and rely on historical and longitudinal data to manage patient populations.”

The federal government has paid $2.5 billion in incentives to 800 hospitals and 33,000 physicians for using EHRs and incentive payments could total $28 billion by 2015. Data remain constant amidst the U.S.’s largest health IT investment and transformation, leading to “a new focus on informatics,” the report said.

More than half of those surveyed reported having formal clinical informatics programs. Organizations with formal programs were more likely to support organizational strategies, share data outside the organization, participate in new care delivery models, consider new strategies for stakeholders and perform more advanced informatics functions.

All sectors—especially health insurers (70 percent)—are expected to hire more technical than clinical talent in the next two years.

The report found the following:

• Data integration and standards are big challenges. Among providers and health insurers, 73 percent of respondents said integrating data from multiple sources was the top technical goal of their organization over the next two years. More than half (56 percent) of the respondents indicated data standardization as a goal with 86 percent classifying it as challenging to accomplish.
• Informatics professionals face difficult choices in complying with new government reporting rules and developing innovative products and services. The majority (58 percent) of provider respondents expressed challenges in prioritizing projects and 52 percent said that higher-priority efforts were taking all the capacity within the organizations.
• Organizations are starting to engage with one another to expand informatics capabilities. Access to resources lead the rest of the healthcare industry to help providers meet clinical informatics goals earlier. For example, 43 percent of provider respondents said lack of funding was a barrier to building their programs.
• Engaging and interacting with patients through informatics has shown mixed results. Only 13 percent of provider and 15 percent of health insurer respondents have impacted patient behavior through their informatics efforts. All sectors view patient engagement as a way to drive profit, either through cost reduction or revenue increases but face challenges.
• Healthcare organizations should build a knowledge culture that is poised to innovate. “Having the right culture in place is critical for organizations to realize the benefits of informatics,” the report said. Organizations need to understand stakeholder requirements, measure and compare performance, provide feedback promoting changes in practice patterns and empower informatics staff.