PFIZER, IBM AND MICROSOFT COLLABORATE TO LAUNCH AMICORE, A SOFTWARE AND SERVICES COMPANY, TO PROVIDE OFFICE AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS TO PHYSICIANS
Amicore Press Release
October 10, 2001
"New York, October 10, 2001 - Pfizer, IBM and Microsoft today announced the launch of Amicore, a newly formed independent software and services company providing workflow and connectivity solutions to office-based physicians. Amicore's focus will be to reduce the administrative workload and paperwork for physicians, allowing them to dedicate more time toward their mission of providing quality patient care."
David Lubinski, Public Sector and Healthcare general manager, Enterprise Sales and Industry Group at Microsoft:
"Microsoft is committed to helping the healthcare industry and its providers reduce paperwork and streamline the practice of medicine. The Microsoft® .Net technology platform will enable physicians to practice medicine any time, any place, on any device."
<http://www.amicore.com/press.html>http://www.amicore.com/press.html
Comment: Heads up! This may be the most important development in health care of this decade. But there has been virtual silence from the health policy community since this press release of a month ago. Why should we be concerned?
The current model of using private health plans to allocate our abundant health care resources has been a miserable failure. The health plans have been riddled with administrative waste, have failed to assure equitable access to care, and have failed to contain runaway health care costs. Because they have created instability in the health care delivery system, major changes are absolutely inevitable. Health plans as we know them are history.
Current functions of health plans include risk pooling, administration and management (managed care), and information management. What will happen to these roles?
Health plans already are abandoning risk pooling as they pass risk on to their beneficiaries, thereby compounding issues of access due to lack of affordability. Risk pooling works well in the public sector, as has been proven by the Medicare program, and it is inevitable that most, if not all, risk pooling will end up in the public sector. Health plans will be relieved of their risk pooling function.
The private health plans have been egregiously wasteful in the administration of their programs, diverting tremendous resources away from patient care and into their own industry. Managed care's greatest success has been in controlling fees through contracting. But that is a function that has been very effectively applied by the public sector, as witness the Medicare program. Other effective managed care tools also can be utilized by public programs with appropriate enabling legislation. In the future, health plans will be relieved of their role in managing care.
But information management holds the promise of improving efficiency, improving quality, reducing error, identifying and improving best practices resulting in better outcomes, improving both controlled access and confidentiality of patient information, and endless other applications that will make our great health care delivery system even better and more efficient. This was the new promise of health plans. But when they were flush with funds, they failed to deliver on this promise, preferring instead to concentrate on a simpler business model of improving profits. They now have one option left. They can metamorphose into information management vendors, or they can step aside while others fulfill this role.
That leads us to today's quote. Microsoft, IBM and Pfizer did not become the companies they are by simply concentrating on the bottom line. They have been astute at recognizing products and services that not only have broad appeal, their products and services have become essential in today's world. Just imagine the role of health care information technology once it has matured. To say that it will be essential to our health care delivery system is a world class understatement! If you think Bill Gates is wealthy now....
Why hasn't the health care system moved into the IT (information technology) age? There are plenty of application service providers with their networks of providers and vendors. But their IT packages have been too expensive. There has been a reluctance to move beyond simple business office management and claims management, partly because of the high cost, and partly because of the fear of rapid obsolescence and concern about the failure to adequately integrate with other IT applications that will be necessary to realize the full potential of IT in health care.
Does IT in health care have to be expensive? When you look at the low cost of today's very powerful home computers, and the low cost of the software and the negligible costs of accessing the Internet, you realize that much can be done at very little expense. The market should be able to provide the computer power needed for an integrated technology system with only a negligible drain on our health care resources. The anticipated value should be much greater than the costs.
The actual costs of developing software than can process medical records is very low. The high charges result from the proprietary interests that continue to profit from ownership and licensing of the software. The public sector could contract for development of the required software, not only for medical records but for all health care IT applications, and then move that software into the public domain. The costs would be a minute fraction of what the industry has in mind. And the public would be receiving great value for its extremely modest investment.
Information management services probably should be provided by vendors in the private sector at contracted rates that provide value for the public dollar. This would be analogous to the entities that currently provide claims processing for the Medicare program. There is plenty of opportunity for the IT industry to establish successful business models that also will create value for all of us, but without repeating the model of the health plans that were designed to suck the resources out of the health care system.
In the future we will most likely continue with our existing private and public health care delivery system, but we will move our risk pools into the public sector, and we will serve the system with a modern, integrated, information technology system.
The policy issue? The health care information technology system probably should be developed and serviced by the private sector, but the funding and policies should be established by the public sector, assuring value for our public dollars, and assuring that the information technology resources will have a mission of improving health care for everyone, instead of a mission of enhancing personal megawealth.
From "Networking Health," by the Committee on Enhancing the Internet for Health Applications: Technical Requirements and Implementation Strategies, National Research Council (National Academy Press):
"A Final Word"
"The recommendations offered above are intended to set the nation on a course that will ensure that technology, organizational practices, and public policies converge in ways that will lead to broader deployment of Internet-based systems in health applications."
Final comment: There is extreme urgency in establishing the public policies that need to be in place as the technology and health care organizational practices converge.
For those that are asleep, THERE IS EXTREME URGENCY IN ESTABLISHING THE PUBLIC POLICIES THAT NEED TO BE IN PLACE AS THE TECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH CARE ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES CONVERGE.