Below is the event description from my invitation:

LISTnet BEST Event
Healthcare
Diagnosis of the past…triage in the present…prescriptions for the future.

Moderator
Kevin Dahill – CEO, Nassau-Suffolk Hospital Council

Keynote
Russell Artzt – Vice Chairman & Founder, CA

Panelists
Lisa A. Walter – AVP Allied Services, Perot Systems
Jack Gallagher – Former-CEO, North Shore LIJ
Kamal Bherwania – CIO, NYC Health and Human Services
Benjamin Stein, MD – Executive Director, LIPIX, Inc
Dr. Ronald Richman, MD – Internist

After the panel gave their unique views on the topic at hand, the floor was opened up for a Q&A session, which could have gone on for hours as each question/answer opened up new ones.

Having been the IT Director/Manager for the past 7 years at 2 local ‘healthcare related’ businesses I was very interested in everything that was said. The panel gave me new insight into what problems each of them experienced in their own diverse practices or areas of responsibilities which ranged from private practice to a CEO of the Nassau/Suffolk Hospital Council.

They explained how the healthcare system had changed and moved away from being ‘patient-centric’ to ‘broken’. A sad state of affairs for sure.

They gave a ton of great statistics about how so many people don’t have healthcare. I will add one of my own that I found on Yahoo this morning, 60% of personal bankruptcies are attributed to medical bills.

You have to understand how diverse all the systems are in the healthcare world. Every doctor’s office, specialty office, hospital, insurance company, and lab has its own unique and most often propriety information systems. Smaller shops rely on custom written programs that may no longer be supported and are just too expensive to upgrade. New systems are too complicated to bring into small and large practices, cost too much to purchase, have high monthly maintenance costs and need to be supported full time by an IT Manager or outside consultant. Some of these companies fail, or are bought out by the bigger more stable companies who may or may not support these older applications.

Now let us bring in ‘STANDARDS’. The panel talked about some of these. One that they didn’t touch on was LOINCing. See the website http://loinc.org/ Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes, which is a new standard that the insurance companies want the labs to use. I am sure that with the stimulus package there will be new standards attached to it.

The keynote speaker of the night, Russell Artzt – Vice Chairman & Founder, CA gave a fascinating look into a project that CA is working on in association with Canada. Monitoring patients from home using wireless technology. I have seen some of this technology demonstrated by the scientists at Stony Brook University’s CEWIT (Center of Excellence In Wireless & Information Technology) www.cewit.org They have a great conference every year showing off what their people are working on. This year’s conference is October 1, 2009 at the Marriott Islandia, Long Island, NY. I have attended the last 2 conferences and have walked away each time in awe of what these dedicated people are working on. Save the date for this conference. Check out their website at www.cewit.org/conference2009

Now getting back to the keynote speaker, Russell Artzt. He came up with an idea that got me to thinking. He said he was over in France earlier this year and he went to an ATM to get money out of his US-based bank account. He put in his ATM card, entered his PIN number and got his money. Simple, direct and what could be the template for our own national EHR.

I am sure that there will be a lot of debate going on about what I am about to discuss and that is good. We need to talk about this topic and we need to come up with the solutions. So here is my view on it.

My present insurance company is Oxford. They will be my ‘bank’. They will be the central depository for all of my medical records. Since everyone has to submit their billing to them, they will also include my medical records. When I leave Oxford because of a job change, my records will be sent to the new insurance company and they will be my new ‘bank’. When a new doctor or lab or MRI practice needs to access my records, I can simply give them my ‘ATM card’ and they will enter ‘their’ PIN number to show that they are who they are.

Every office would need to be able to send their ‘electronic patient information’ to the ‘bank’ in a standardized format. They could use whatever company’s application that they are using, but that company would have to add/include a way to ‘ftp/edi’ the patient information in that standardized format.

Like I said previously, this is going to open up a lot of questions and I welcome them. Thru intelligent conversation we will be able to solve these problems! After all this is Long Island and we were part of the team that put a man on the moon! Remember Grumman built the LEM!