A joining of forces. The promise of community health information management systems (CHIMSs).
Every time you buy a bag of Frito-Lay corn chips, information regarding your purchase becomes part of a customer database within hours. America's snack food "needs" are analyzed and decisions are made about filling the shelves of every corner convenience store in the nation with exactly the right product. This system has saved the company more than $20 million a year through increased efficiency. But when you buy a diagnostic test to identify a potentially life-threatening condition, results can remain unavailable for days. If we can bring computerized efficiencies to marketing corn chips, why aren't we doing it for healthcare? Imagine--managers of community health systems who know their customers' needs so precisely that they "fill the shelves" of local "convenience health stops" with exactly the right services to maximize the health of the customers. As a by-product, they save a few million dollars per year in costs. Managers of other industries use information technology to deliver the right product or service to customers at just the right time, to differentiate their services by adding value, to compete effectively on cost and/or quality. Many members of the healthcare industry, where only 2.6 percent of expenditures go to information systems (compared to 5 percent in manufacturing and 7 percent in banking) and where the basic unit of work--the patient record--is still a manual process, are years behind in their thinking about how information systems can make their business better.
HealthCare Management Systems Inc., Boston.
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D003153:Community Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000639:trends*; D017146:Models, Organizational; D009096:Multi-Institutional Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D010934:Planning Techniques; D014481:United States