Texas Roundtable Eyes Healthcare IT Impacts and Workforce
Implications
Political will and technology innovation may be converging to produce
major changes and widespread adoption of healthcare information
technology (HIT) solutions, according to a panel of experts. CCA,
along with the Career Colleges & Schools of Texas and TechAmerica,
co-hosted a CEO Roundtable in Austin, Texas, this week to explore the
type of healthcare workforce needed to take advantage of this newly
forming momentum and, in so doing, to help raise the healthcare profile
in Texas—now ranked 46th among states overall on health
system performance.
The event brought together leaders from state government, the
healthcare and healthcare policy communities, HIT solution providers and
the career sector. Moderated by Claire Shipman, ABC News,
roundtable participants were: Rep. Mark Strama, Texas House of
Representatives and Chairman, Technoloy, Economic Development and
Workforce Committee; Harris Miller, President, CCA; Jeff Clark,
Executive Director, TechAmerica Texas; Patrick Debold, Vice
President of Academic Affairs, Concorde Career Colleges; Lawrence M.
Hanrahan, MD, Global Lead, Accenture Health Facility Development; John
Lubrano, Founder, Protis IT Solutions; Camille Miller, President and
CEO, Texas Health Institute, and Ted Terrazas, President and CEO,
TerraHealth.
Dr. Hanrahan recalled that much has changed since 1990, when the
automated health record consisted of a full list of patient medications
for the physician. “It’s almost 20 years later and we
still have not delivered on that promise,” Dr. Hanrahan
said. “What’s exciting about today,” he said,
“is that the technology and the political will have both caught up
with the promises we’ve been making for 20 years. The
implications of that are dramatic, and they are going to be dramatic at
the bedside or in the physician’s office…the clinical and
operational workflow challenges that the electronic health record will
drive…the impact that we will be seeing not just to physicians but
to clinicians across the health spectrum is going to be
dramatic.”
Rep. Strama indicated that the federal government’s decision to
pump money into health care IT is an indication that the marketplace
itself was not rising to the challenge and further delay is
unacceptable: “We have a pretty big macro problem in
Texas. We have the highest percentage of children without health
insurance of any state in the country. We may well see that our
state has a lot of catching up to do under federal healthcare reform
requirements…that we have to make a bigger investment at the state
level to meet the demands of a federal healthcare bill. To the
extent that healthcare IT holds the promise of enabling us to provide
better service at a lower cost, it will help us meet the requirements of
universal coverage.
Strama continued, “Anyone who follows the Texas budget knows we
are going in a difficult budget cycle over the next four years.
That said, I don’t think we will see those benefits at the front
end. There’s a reason that the federal government put tens
of billions of dollars into this. The marketplace isn’t
driving the behavior the way the market demanded that every other sector
invest in IT just to remain competitive. There didn’t have
to be a huge federal incentive to do so in other sectors of the
economy. In the healthcare industry, for some reason, the market
hasn’t driven that behavior on its own.”
Camille Miller of the Texas Health Institute says she feels
“pretty confident” that Texas will share a slice of the
federal grant money targeting money for the creation of health
information exchanges. “That will bring $30 million just to
help us with planning and visioning. A lot of other states already
have these offices in place…they are already working on this
workforce shortage issue that we are not really working on
yet.” Referring to the education pipeline to get people into
healthcare IT jobs, Miller said, “You have to start in elementary
school …what are we doing in Texas about that? I think we
need to do a lot more.” She said other big gaps exist in
terms of consumers understanding the goals and promises of HIT and the
fact that there are jobs and careers available as a result of its
use.
CCA plans similar sessions to spur a multi-stakeholder dialogue on
healthcare IT in other parts of the country. The Austin roundtable
was sponsored by Pearson Learning Solutions, Dell, Intel and Accenture.
CCA Contact: Bob Cohen
