Oh, Health Care Pioneers!
It’s time for big moves in global health care technology and Minnesota needs
to be a major player. BY KATE RUBIN
TO SAY THERE are no easy answers to our nation’s health care
crisis is a wild understatement. Experts agree on one thing for
sure—the need to upgrade our nation’s technology infrastructure,
to reduce the skyrocketing cost of health care.
Even in healthy Minnesota, which ranks behind only Hawaii for
life expectancy and number one or two in a host of other health categories, we have work to do. Minnesotans spend an average of just
over $6,500 per year on out of pocket medical expenses. In 1970,
we each spent about $390 annually. If the state follows the current
trend line, in 25 years health care will consume the entire state budget leaving no money for anything else.
Today the nation spends $2.3 trillion per year on health care, yet
most agree that: 1) too few people have access to high quality care;
2) there is too much waste; and 3) too few physicians are connected
to the nation’s 21st century infrastructure.
What if there was a way over the next decade to cut well over
$300 billion off that number? What if, while doing so, we could provide better care, and reduce inefficiencies and fraud? An interesting
proposal is laid out in a report published last summer called Health
Care Cost Containment: How Technology Can Cut Red Tape and
Simplify Health Care Administration, published by UnitedHealth
Group. ( unitedhealthgroup.com/hrm/unh_workingpaper2.pdf)
UnitedHealth Group knows a thing or two about both technology and health care. The nation’s largest health insurer has over
12,000 technology professionals who oversee 30 terabytes of health
care data and invest seven million hours annually in application
development. Each year the company’s systems process 60 billion
transactions and support 82 million calls, routed to 20,000 customer
service agents.
• Use predictive modeling to ‘pre-score’
claims to better coordinate benefits and
prevent fraud.
« KATE RUBIN
( krubin@mhta.org)
is president of the
Minnesota High Tech
Association (mhta.
org), an association
of businesses that
work together to
support the growth,
sustainability and
global competitiveness of Minnesota’s
technology-based
economy.
These approaches are all founded on
the rapid deployment and adoption of
data and transaction standards taking place
under the guidance of Aneesh Chopra,
President Obama’s Chief Technology Officer (the first in the nation). Chopra, who
was in Minnesota to discuss this issue in
December, outlined three big areas where
the President wants to use technology in
health care:
DATA: In the retail sector, every transaction is managed, mined and evaluated. Not
so for public health. Only a tiny amount
of this data is being shared right now,
Chopra said, but $1.1 billion of the economic stimulus package is being spent to
build out the necessary infrastructure with security as a focal point.
INNOVATION STANDARDS: The Feds are in the process of setting standards and certifications for products that achieve “
meaningful use,” meaning they use technology to achieve a broader objective
such as improving quality, lowering cost, and improving customer
satisfaction.
THE REPORT RECOMMENDS 12 PROPOSALS THAT
ALIGN WITH THE FOLLOWING THEMES:
• For patients, go electronic. Zero out paper checks for electronic
funds transfer, use automated cards for patient benefit data, and
create a monthly online personalized patient health statement.
BILLING: Seventeen cents of every dollar spent on health care is
spent on billing, Chopra said, and the administration is looking at
ways to improve the process and reduce those costs.
• For providers, expand use of electronic data interchange, implement
multi-payer transactional capability for practice management systems, and integrate practice management systems with payer systems.
« Go to unitedhealth
group.com/hrm/unh_
workingpaper2.pdf to
see their solution.
• Integrate electronic medical records with personal health records
to better coordinate care.
People are ready for this new world. About 83 percent of us have
searched for health care information online, often stopping at sites
like the very popular Mayoclinic.com.
Minnesota has been a pioneer in both the medical field as well as
information technology. The rest of the country often looks in our
direction for the latest innovations in both fields. There are many
qualified Minnesota technology companies who can and are assisting in this effort. Hopefully we’ll invest, to keep quality high and costs
low. We simply cannot afford to fail.
