It’s the Network, stupid

So November 2nd came and went and the GOP has done well and media of every form and shape is trying to predict the fate of health care reform. Uncertainty looms large over the Affordable Care Act, but there is one tiny bit of it that has gathered enough momentum during the last two years to be unstoppable and irreversible. Health Information Technology (HIT) has made it over the tipping point and its dependency on Government support is no more.

The skeptics and those opposing HIT in general, will be pointing out that if the new-and-improved Government finds a way to reverse the flow of billions of dollars initiated by the HITECH act, all activities will come to a grinding halt. No more Meaningful Use and no more State HIE and no more RECs evangelizing for adoption of EHRs and, most importantly, no more cash incentives for physicians to buy those pesky EHRs. Surely all health care providers will turn back to their voluminous paper charts with a sigh of relief and a gleeful “I told you so”. And perhaps some will, but not many and not for very long.

With or without Government involvement, the health care fundamentals remain unchanged. Health care is too expensive for most Americans and anyone selling health care services will have to find a way to manage costs down if they are to stay in business. Hospitals and large systems have recently made astronomic investments in HIT. These cannot be ripped out and written off as easily as one may imagine. The logical path for these large providers is to compensate for potential loss of incentives by finding other returns for their investments. Perhaps CPOE and reporting of convoluted quality measures will be taking a backseat to measuring efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Since keeping folks healthy in the first place seems cheaper than managing diseases and complications, perhaps longitudinal health management and coordination of services will become a major priority. To keep profitability up in a market where most people are non-consumers (the GOP way), or a highly regulated low-margins market (the Democrats way), health care providers will be competing for every bit of market share through mergers and consolidations and the creation of Networks. And Networks are powered by HIT.

The Medical Society of Delaware was founded when George Washington was President. Last week, the Society announced the creation of a statewide Network connecting all its members to Delaware patients. Every Delaware resident is provided with free access to a Personal Health Record (PHR) supplied by RelayHealth and in collaboration with LabCorp, Delaware physicians will be sharing lab results with their patients and each other. Delaware is also home to the first operational State Network (2007), the Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN), which connects over 60% of Delaware’s physicians with hospitals, labs and patients and provides a variety of clinical information exchange.

Michigan is kicking off its brand new statewide Network as well. The Physicians’ Organization of West Michigan (POWM) in collaboration with the University of Michigan Health System is creating the Physicians Organization of Michigan (POM), thus “allowing independent physicians to stay independent, rather than at the behest of a large hospital system”. POM is combining resources from two very large organizations to provide physicians and physician groups across Michigan with “access to resources, opportunities and support that will allow them to remain independent while adapting to the new health care environment”. This of course includes “access to shared technology systems and a framework for measuring and improving the quality of the care they provide”.

On the vendor side, eClinicalWorks (eCW) unveiled its 100millionpatients.com Patient Portal to complement the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) community Network spanning all eCW users, and to some degree practices that are not eCW customers. Within the eCW P2P Network, physicians can exchange referrals (summaries, results and all sorts of documents), schedules and demographics, with a click of a button. The new PHR will presumably give patients similar cross Network access. And then, there is Surescripts, with its Network of over 150,000 prescribers, 85% of pharmacies and 65% of patients. Recently Surescripts decided to expand beyond prescriptions and make its Network available for exchange of a wider variety of clinical information. This is a national Network and judging by its current practices, Surescripts will be offering a completely open and standards based Network to all HIT vendors, and their customers, wishing to connect and exchange clinical information. Another prominent Network operator, NaviNet, has recently announced its intent to embed a fully certified EHR in its largely administrative Network of hundreds of thousands of providers.

There are many more such Networks being created, extended and deployed all over the country. What do all these Networks have in common? They are not supported by Government funds. These are private investments in clinical information exchange. Most of these Networks can afford to provide connectivity to both patients and providers for nominal prices, or completely free, since their revenues will be coming from secondary sources, such as referrals, payers, pharmacies and data mining. If the financial HITECH fountainhead is shut off by the new realities in Washington (not very likely), or throttled back somewhat (probably), these market driven Networks will be only minimally affected. HIT is here to stay. For all those who are skeptical or downright opposed to HIT, please look back at each and single technology in use today and understand that technology only moves in one direction: forward.