A million here, a million there. What a great name for this week's discussion on Health IT investments. Healthcare leaders are making decisions with consequences on a very large scale when it comes to paying big upfront and ongoing costs towards building and maintaining health IT infrastructure and systems, as well as covering the costs of system upgrades and training and hiring new staff. Because of this, I think this week's discussion and thinking about how to make the right strategic health IT investments was important.
A clear understanding of what we aim to achieve and the measures we will use to evaluate the success of our investments, based on the value they generate, is critical to making wise decisions. Lots of literature has been written about the different types of value that health IT can generate if implemented and used appropriately-- such as improvements to clinical workflow and outcomes, patient and/or physician engagement, cost reductions or ability to better manage the health of populations. Thus, it's important to weigh the various types of value that health IT investments may generate for our own organizations and ensure that they align with both financial incentives and our overall strategic plan.
Finally, I want to reflect a little bit on the CIO's role in helping other senior leaders see the importance in investing in health IT. Even if the CIO knows for sure it's well worth it and has tons of data to support that claim, if he or she cannot get the CFO and the rest of the senior leaders to say "yes" to the investments, then CIO can only work with what is currently in place. I've come to understand that it takes a significant amount of business acumen, tact, understanding of the organization, and good communication to be successful in managing health IT and informatics.
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