New federal study shows barriers to healthcare IT - All over the place

There’s a lot of truth to this study in more ways than one. Shoot I’m sitting around Twitter hoping to inspire some physicians, readers, PHDs, journalists, business leaders, business organizations, students, you name it, to just try a FREE PHR, and see what power is there and what they do. The second paragraph in bold below says all, they are effective and systems are financially difficult to support, except the PHR which free, make sense?

It is going to be a while before we are all connected, so enter Web 2.0 with free PHRs. You can’t really specifically talk about one unless you get one, otherwise there’s no real experience to relate, and this is something for everyone alike. Even if you decide you are not ready for one yet, create a fake one to play around with, as you can easily delete it, so the learning experience is right there too, so all we need now is the “doing” part of equation to learn, teamwork with healthcare and patients. It’s like you did with your old AOL disc years ago, if you didn’t like it, you got rid of it, but at least you knew what it was all about. Below is a good post to check out, as Dr. Crounse from Microsoft who I met at HIMMS this year, shares with some information from Japan, who are very anxious for Google Health and the HealthVault to arrive for use in Japan, perhaps a bit of an opposite of how we feel here?

Healthcare in Japan Today

If you read further, they are doing waistline check in Japan too, and I agree with Dr. Crounse that this would probably go over like a lead balloon here, but keep in mind the growing entities of the health coaches from the insurers to negotiate to offer employers lower insurance rates and that is out growing movement here, and take a look at a prior post, the human audit trail for some interesting reading and thoughts. There’s 2 kinds of technologies out there, good and intrusive so good watchdogs are needed to ensure a balance so it doesn’t all become intrusive and we still maintain some human dignity as the technology age evolves. BD

WASHINGTON - A study released by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) shows that certain factors consistently prevent elderly, chronically ill and underserved consumers and their physicians from using healthcare IT or drive them away from it. The 1,422-page report, released by AHRQ on November 14 and conducted by the Oregon Health and Science University's Evidence-Based Practice Center, showed that healthcare IT systems that allow physicians to assess their patients' current health status, treatment plan and goals and provide new or adjusted treatment advice are most successfully used.

The systems are effective regardless of the type of illness the patient has, their education or income status, location or type of technology used, the study said. "These activities are difficult to support financially under current episode-based, fee-for-service healthcare reimbursement mechanisms," researchers found.

Barriers to adoption of healthcare IT systems occur when these target groups of patients do not see the benefit of using computers or other interactive technologies for self-managing their health problems. Other barriers include time constraints for the patient, a lack of trust in the information received, technical problems and a lack of physician responsiveness to questions, the study found.

New federal study shows barriers to healthcare IT use

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