Health IT, Hospitals

What are hospitals’ innovation priorities and what’s holding them back? (infographic)

Cost reduction, patient satisfaction, knowledge sharing and reducing medical errors are among the top goals […]

Cost reduction, patient satisfaction, knowledge sharing and reducing medical errors are among the top goals driving innovation at hospitals and health systems, according to a new report by HIMSS and Avia.

Clinical decision support, disease management, care coordination, patient follow-up and shared decision making have been the top innovation priorities for providers and are areas where they have made the most progress. Remote monitoring, population health and predictive analytics are on the to-do list for many of the respondents.

The findings reflect the points of view of 92 participants, so HIMSS hastened to point out that the findings only represent a small portion of providers. Health systems with revenues of more than $1 billion accounted for more than half of the respondents and 61 percent had 500 beds or more.

What are the biggest challenges to innovation?

  • Limited personnel to implement new innovations
  • Cultural and change management challenges
  • Limited capital to invest in new innovations
  • Workflow or process barriers
  • Physician adoption
  • Limits of our existing enterprise EMR

Not surprisingly, money seems to be behind many of the obstacles to innovation. After all, you’re more likely to find a chief innovation officer at a health system with revenues of more than $5 billion than, say, under $500 million. But the workflow issue is an important one because it suggests that the sources recommending or implementing the changes, such as the provider’s IT department, consultants, vendors or startups aren’t communicating with the folks who are impacted by those changes. It’s probably also the toughest challenge to overcome since it ties in to work culture and physician adoption.

The innovation priorities make sense because these are the areas where hospitals can make the biggest difference in reducing readmissions, which reduce costs from potential penalties incurred from CMS for having a higher-than-average readmission rate for a particular condition, improving patient satisfaction and reducing hospitalization costs.

[Photo Credit for featured photo: Freedigitalphotos user sdmania]

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