Though relatively underfunded compared to other health IT initiatives, patient engagement, precision medicine and data aggregation and analytics stand to have the greatest impact on value-based care, a recent survey of hospital executives finds.
Executives believe those three technologies will drive better treatments and overall care, according to the new "Top of Mind for Top Health Systems 2020" report from KLAS and the Center for Connected Medicine, which is jointly operated by UPMC, GE Healthcare and Nokia. The report surveyed 70 leaders from 65 health systems across the U.S.; nearly half of respondents were CIOs, with the remainder comprising other C-level and director roles.
Here are four key takeaways from the report:
1. While organizations are leveraging multiple solutions in an effort to engage patients, from patient portals to telemedicine to mobile apps, patient adoption remains low: Respondents reported that barely one-third of patients have adopted the offered engagement technologies.
2. Data aggregation and analytics capabilities are a top priority for healthcare organizations. Those surveyed said they were more than 70 percent of the way to complete clinical integration — in which patients' clinical data is fully accessible within an existing EHR system — and more than 60 percent of the way to full integration, in which a single system contains not only patients' clinical data, but also their financial, demographic, claims and other data.
3. Barriers to both clinical and full data integration cited by survey respondents include limited resources and funding, and poor data normalization. Additionally, almost half of respondents said those barriers stem largely from health IT vendors.
4. Only 12 percent of organizations surveyed categorized their precision medicine efforts as having high maturity. Obstacles to these initiatives, which show great promise in terms of both clinical research and improved outcomes, include reimbursement issues and a lack of return on investment.
View the full report here.
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