Consumer-driven healthcare shifts MD tech needs

Doctors will do better with consumer-driven healthcare if they boost health IT investment now, according to a new report from health and IT consulting firm First Consulting Group. Not surprisingly, the report concludes that EMR systems will be critical to meeting savvy consumers' information needs. But in the CDH world, a good internal EMR network isn't enough. Physicians will need to store and exchange information electronically, so they can give consumers the comparative quality and pricing information they want. For that reason, any EMR system they implement will need to be able to accept and distribute data from outside systems, First Consulting says. Web portals may turn out to be a key method for exchanging member and claims information with health plans, along with letting patients pay account balances. Patients will be able to use the same portals to conduct e-visits (see below). Ultimately, sophisticated physician groups may very well want to implement a CRM system, given the need to manage the "customer" experience of patients.

To find out more about practice technology shifts:
- read this article in Healthcare IT News
- read the First Consulting report (.pdf)

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