CLASS READING ABSTRACTS
CLASS NINE
REQUIRED READINGS
CLASS NINE
ABSTRACT OF REQUIRED READING
: RR9-3. Ed Egger, "How Technology is Changing the Health Care System," Health Care Strategic Management (January, 2000): 1, 20 - 23.This is an article examining how e-health will change the delivery of care.
Technology will change how hospitals and doctors deal with patients and deliver health care such as: interactive Internet communications and new computer networking capabilities to new medical instruments, diagnostic devices and human genome research. Digitization and data enhancement advances that vastly improve quality and portability of images, resulting in super fast CTs, MRIs substituting for diagnostic paths, cellular imaging and remote management of real time health status of patients.
Patients will no longer need to be geographically close to the hospital, emphasis will be on prevention rather than treatment, there will be fewer but more sophisticated specialized centers.
Development in human genomics will bring about new developments in immunology, diagnostics, therapeutic vaccines and organ substitutes, resulting in new cancer research capabilities, therapies for cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy, and heart valve implants from pigs.
Improvements in computer-based technologies will result in new blood and chemical analyzers, occular prosthetics, remote-controlled laparoscopic cameras, integrated patient medical systems and intelligent hearing aids.
Increase in information available will eliminated most differences in price and outcomes, leaving only service as the main differentiator in an industry with significant and growing excess capacity.
"Consumerism" among patients, 80 million empowered consumers expecting more from health care than in previous generations and tend to "question authority, self-medicate and look for other solutions when conventional treatments fail to elicit the cure they want."
Employers shifting more of the health care insurance costs onto employees, causing employees to "comparison shop" for health care solutions, "the more they pay, the more they have to say".
A study found that 42% of resondents would welcome useful information from a hospital Web site, but only 8% report finding what they want. Further, 29% said they would also switch doctors to get physician websites like that and 33% said they would switch doctors to be able to communicate with their doctors via e-mail.