HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) recently released its 2022 report on the state of healthcare. HIMSS is committed to improving global healthcare with technology — critical, given today’s rapid transformation around digital care and records management.
HIMSS members include those at the forefront of their fields in medicine, healthcare technology, public policy and research. Such a broad range of members gives the organization a unique perspective and affords a comprehensive understanding of the challenges facing the healthcare system.
Methods
HIMSS worked with its Trust Partners—Accenture, The Chartis Group and ZS—to survey a wide range of healthcare stakeholders: physicians, patients, insurance companies, clinicians and other members of healthcare systems management. They inquired about priorities and advancements in the industry and how they’re changing the way healthcare is delivered.
The survey was conducted between November and December of 2021. There is nearly a consensus that the migration towards a more global, interconnected and digital patient care system is underway, despite localized variations. Overall, the data gives critical insight for healthcare leaders as they plan the next steps in the industry.
Digital Transformation of Healthcare
The research found that huge leaps in the digital transformation of healthcare were made during the pandemic. Virtual visits, overworked healthcare providers and the need to process an immense volume of reports in a short period of time made efficient use of new technology a necessity.
The report also found that the rate of implementation of these technological advances varied significantly from one geographic location to another. While 99% of United States-based providers and 95% of international respondents agreed that digital transformation was a vital part of the future of medicine, only 21% of U.S.-based respondents thought they had successfully reached full implementation. Their international counterparts felt their healthcare systems were doing a better job with 34% indicating that their system had reached full implementation.
Personalized Patient Care
Personalized care in medicine is another important trend in modern healthcare. More than half of the patients surveyed in the United Kingdom and the United States reported that they felt their physicians had made them partners in their own health care. This included the patient perception that doctors were more concerned with their total wellbeing and included lifestyle and mental health concerns when considering treatment options.
Clinicians, insurers, and health care facility leaders all agreed that more personalized healthcare—involving the patient in the process and factoring their total well-being into it—is advantageous. The providers and the payers pointed to higher patient satisfaction as the primary advantage while healthcare leaders cited improved and more predictable outcomes of treatment as the biggest positive.
Challenges to the Implementation of These Aspects of Healthcare
Most respondents agreed that the digital transformation was an important step in the personalization of healthcare. The new technology allows for the gathering, compiling and dissemination of information so that all members of the healthcare team can have real-time access to it.
The slow or incomplete implementation of digital healthcare tools was seen by many respondents as a hindrance to the growth of patient-centered healthcare.
One aspect of the digital transformation of medicine is the use of virtual visits, which are convenient for both patients and healthcare providers. Increased use of virtual visits would seem like a welcome change but has instead become a point of contention between clinicians and insurance companies.
In the United States, nearly 80% of providers believe that virtual visits warrant the same or greater compensation than face-to-face visits. Insurance companies disagree, and the argument has resulted in delaying the full implementation of telehealth.
Virtual visits may also be problematic for patients. Substantially more international patients believed they received better care from face-to-face visits than virtual ones. There is also the issue of unreliable or nonexistent internet access which has slowed international implementation of virtual visits.
Additionally, the immense amount of data being exchanged between numerous organizations requires efficient, secure organization. Issues of cybersecurity and compliance with legislation further impact implementation of a digital healthcare industry. The logistics of managing so much data, added to tension between stakeholders, have certainly set hurdles for health IT leaders to overcome.
Solutions
Updated cybersecurity measures may ease some concerns, but others such as data management and patient experience need to be addressed to see progress. Effective professionals need quality education to complement their experience and move healthcare forward.
