Healthcare CIO: Final Report

Concern for patient safety tops the list of priorities for this year’s information technology (IT) healthcare executives, surpassing HIPAA issues, which falls to the second biggest priority. Implementing technology to reduce medical errors and promote patient safety is the top IT priority for 52 percent of respondents, up from 46 percent last year.

With privacy, security, and transaction and code sets deadlines looming ahead this year, the percentage of respondents who are upgrading security on information technology IT systems to meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requirements has declined to 47 percent, down from 60 percent in 2002. However, implementing privacy modifications to meet HIPAA requirements was the third most cited priority, identified by 46 percent of respondents. This was not offered as a response last year. When these responses are analyzed together, 66 percent of respondents are taking some action to ensure that their organizations meet HIPAA requirements; 27 percent are implementing both types of technology.

Interest in deploying Internet technology continues to wane. The number two priority in 2001, interest in Internet technology has fallen eight points each of the last two years. This year, it was identified by 23 percent of respondents as a top priority for their organizations.

Large declines in interest from last year also were reported for training personnel to use existing and newly installed systems (falling eight percentage points to 15 percent) and replacing/upgrading inpatient financial/administrative systems (falling eight percentage points to 13 percent).

Additionally, interest in enterprise-wide systems jumped this year by 14 percentage points (from 12 percent to 26 percent). However, this year’s question includes a broad spectrum of enterprise-wide applications, including master patient index applications (MPI), enterprise-wide resource planning applications, and clinical information sharing technology. Last year’s question was limited to deployment of MPIs. As a result, it’s possible that respondents’ increased interest in these types of applications might only reflect the broader array of applications.

Some 59 percent of respondents also identified increasing patient safety and reducing medical errors as their top priority in the next two years, up from 46 percent last year. Last year, upgrading security on IT systems to meet HIPAA requirements was the top anticipated priority, but these upgrades fell to number two this year, cited by 43 percent of respondents, compared with 56 percent in 2002. Implementing a computer-based patient record system (CPR) was mentioned next, identified as a priority by 40 percent of respondents, compared with 33 percent in 2002.

Implementing privacy modifications to meet HIPAA requirements, identified by 46 percent of respondents as a current IT priority, is identified by only 15 percent of respondents as a priority in the next two years. Additionally, perhaps because many organizations already have begun to take this step, implementing EDI to meet HIPAA requirements declined 21 percentage points—29 percent today compared to nine percent in two years.

Implementing enterprise-wide applications, defined more broadly in this year’s survey, doubled as a future priority compared to last year, jumping to 34 percent. Only 13 percent of respondents indicated that training personnel to use existing and newly installed systems would be a future priority, a decline of nine percentage points from last year.

For the first time, respondents this year identified increasing patient safety/reducing medical errors as the business issue that will have the most impact on the healthcare industry in the next two years. This was identified by 63 percent of respondents. Last year, reducing medical errors was identified by 52 percent of respondents, ranking it second; 26 percent of respondents last year also identified patient safety as the top issue. In 2002, 61 percent of respondents indicated that either medical errors, patient safety or both were a top business issue.

Despite 2003’s approaching HIPAA deadlines, compliance with those regulations was ranked second in response to the most important business issue, mentioned by 61 percent of respondents, down 20 percentage points from the 2002 survey. This may reflect that respondents believe they have made sufficient progress toward meeting HIPAA requirements. For the second year in a row, cost pressures rounds out the top three business issues, this year mentioned by 56 percent of respondents, compared with 51 percent who mentioned this issue in 2002. Other items that had a large shift in percent from 2002 to 2003 include:

• Obtaining capital—down 14 percentage points to 22 percent
• Other compliance issues (non-HIPAA)—down 11 percentage points to two percent
• Clinical transformation (adopting clinical best practices)—up ten percentage points to 23 percent
• Government regulation—down nine percentage points to 15 percent
• Medicare cutbacks—up eight percentage points to 47 percent