Microsoft executive Bill Crounse, MD urged an audience of healthcare executives here Tuesday at the Third Annual World Congress Leadership Summit on The Road to Interoperability to develop a new business model for healthcare.
"Around the world, it's not affordable," Crounse said. "The message is there has to be more consumer involvement."
Crounse, a family physician and senior director of worldwide health for Microsoft, called the state of healthcare in America "alarming." An aging population, labor shortages (a problem the world over, he said) and expensive technology are brewing what he called "a perfect storm."
G. Daniel Martich, MD, chief medical information officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, noted that U.S. healthcare organizations spend less than 3 percent of their budgets on IT. Martich was part of a panel that included Bill Beighe, CIO of Physicians Medical Group of Santa Cruz (Calif.) and Barbara Blakeney, a nurse and past president of the American Nurses Association, who is now innovation specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital's Center for Innovation in Care Delivery.
Patients are demanding interdisciplinary teams, she said, and electronic health records have to gather data for all disciplines.
"We need to take the time now to collect that data in meaningful ways to tip the scales toward preventive care," she said.
Beighe agreed, and noted that innovation in care is often blocked by the existing payment system.
Some payers will not reimburse physicians for an e-visit, he said, but they will pay for a van to transport the patient to the doctor's office and back and also pay the physician for that office visit.
Blakeney urged healthcare executives to look at spending in relationship to outcomes.
"It is a terrible, terrible return on investment," she said. "Somehow, we've got to break out of the entrenchment. We are so entrenched in a system that is ultimately not serving our patients."
"The message is there has to be more personal involvement," Crounse said. "If you have any money at all, you are going to be spending more for healthcare."
On the globalization front, Crounse referred to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat."
"The healthcare world is flat, too," he said. Some hospitals around the world, including one in Bangkok, Thailand, are operating like five-star hotels and attracting patients from the United States and around the world.
Crounse noted five trends in healthcare today:
1. Increasing personal responsibility,
2. Retailization of healthcare,
3. Commoditization of providers,
4. Information everywhere, and
5. Globalization.