HIMSS/HP survey targets reform, outcomes, networks, budgets - Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society

Health Management Technology, April, 1994

Responses nearly doubled this year to the fifth survey sponsored by Hewlett-Packard Company, Andover, Mass., and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The automated survey administered at February's HIMSS annual conference in Phoenix drew 1,033 responses, up significantly from the 571 healthcare information professionals who responded to the survey last year. J.C. Pollock Associates conducted the survey.

What was hot? Interset in comparative health outcomes data, networking technologies with a view toward emerging regional healthcare delivery models, bigger I/S budgets, the Internet and the electronic superhighway.

Requests for comparative outcomes information as well as the shift to managed-care delivery systems are driving an increased need for healthcare computerization, according to nearly half of the survey respondents.

Fifty-five percent of the those who took the survey said their institutions will participate in the Joint Commission's IMS quality outcomes program during 1994. Seventy percent said they were already participating in local or regional outcomes projects, and 75 percent have their own in-house outcomes projects underway right now, according to sources at Hewlett-Packard.

Nearly a third of the survey respondents indicated that integration accross separate facilities is their most important I/S priority for the next two years. The implementation of a computer-based patient record is set as the next highest priority by 19 percent of the respondents. forty-three percent said that Ethernet/Ethertwisr is most likely to be adopted as their main networking technology.

Half of all respondents reported that their information systems are networked to physician offices (57%), pharmacies (54%) and radiology clinics (50%). The flip side of these connectivity statistics is, however, that fewer than one-third of respondents said they were networked to home-care providers (27%), long-term care facilities (27%). Rehabilitation centers are slightly more often connected, at 34 percent.

good news on the budget side, though. The climate of reform may be spurring a more rapid investment by healthcare institutions in I/S, according to survey respondents. Eight-five percent said their budgets were expected to increase somewhat or substantially over the next two years. Last year, only 71 percent of respondents anticipate such budget growth.

Twenty-four percent identified the upgrade of networks and the incorporation of multimedia technologies as their greatest telecommunications challenges. Three in 10 respondents said their organizations have already made substantial equipment investments to make possible to a computer-based patient record.

The Internet is gaining in popularity in the healthcare sector. Half of the survey respondents said theif institutions use the Internet. How? Eighty-one percent send E-mail between facilities. Sixty-nine percent use it to query research databases.

Although no consistent definition of an "information superhighway" was given, 56 percent of those who took the HIMSS-HP survey said the superhighway would be "absolutely essential" for healthcare.

Ninety percent of respondents are migrating to client/server technology. More than half of all respondents (54%) said they have already migrated or will migrate to this environment within five years.

Sources at Hewlett-Packard and HIMSS say that when 43 percent of survey takers said the most important skill required for a healthcare chief information officer is business strategy development, this may reflect the driving need for healthcare organizations to improve business process and gain greater efficiencies.