Moving from Checkboxes to the Complete Patient Story - NHCC

Nearly 100 Leadership Health Care (LHC) members attended today’s Fundamentals Series program, “Health Care IT: Managing the Midlife Crisis” with Vern Davenport, Chairman and CEO of M*Modal, the largest provider of medical transcription services in the U.S.

In his presentation, Davenport discussed the evolution and impact of technology on health care and clinical documentation and what’s at stake for both patients and caregivers.  He pointed out that as many as 98,000 Americans die each year from preventable medical errors in hospitals, and while electronic health records can go a long way in preventing these errors, they often fail to capture the full patient story.

Fifty-one percent of physician groups and 77 percent of large health care facilities have adopted EHRs, but results have been mixed, with some providers claiming that EHRs have not improved quality or productivity. The United States still has the highest health care costs in the world.

Davenport explained the need to marry technology with the way doctors really practice, much like the way Apple developed technology in a user-friendly way for widespread consumption. For example, M*Modal has developed EHR programs with voice-recognition capabilities, which allow doctors to document patient records using speech to text technology in real-time and to capture the patient’s full story.

In closing, Davenport discussed the future of the health care IT market and reiterated to the crowd of emerging leaders that health care is an industry with more new value growth potential than any other industry in the world, including technology.

LHC’s Fundamentals Series introduces participants to a wide range of key health care industry topics that are relevant to up-and-coming industry leaders. For more information about Leadership Health Care, visit www.leadershiphealthcare.com.