Wednesday, June 27, 2012

U.S. Healthcare Needs Data Standards, Registries, Study Says

Lewis, Nicole. "U.S. Healthcare Needs Data Standards, Registries, Study Says." InformationWeek, June 21, 2012.

From the article: "Due to the highly complex and fragmented nature of the U.S. healthcare system, developing a value-based healthcare model nationwide remains a daunting challenge, a new study from the Boston Consulting Group concludes.

The study, Progress Toward Value-Based Health Care, examined the progress toward implementing a value-based healthcare system in 12 developed countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, the U.K, and the U.S. The study assessed how these countries collect clinical data for the purpose of identifying best practices to improve the delivery of care while reducing costs.

As the U.S. moves from paper-based patient records to EHRs and looks to establish health information exchanges and accountable care organizations, Simon Kennedy, BCG's senior partner and managing director, says more could be done.

"There are several things the Obama administration and the ONC have not done that would make life a lot easier," Kennedy told InformationWeek Healthcare. Included in this wish list: strong patient identification, provider identification, and data exchange standards."
Read more

See also
"Progress Toward Value-Based Health Care," a report prepared by the Boston Consulting Group, June 6, 2011.