One of the major shifts that will occur with successful Meaningful Use will be movement from a focus on data collection in 2011 to performance improvement in 2015. This, however, will require significant rethinking by the healthcare industry of how we interact with the data within our electronic systems. A clinical quality improvement consultant recent told me a story that exemplifies this challenge. In order to conduct an assessment of an organization’s quality processes, he asked to audit 50 charts. He described his excitement when he learned, “they have an electronic medical record, so this should be easy”. Summary sheets were printed from the EMR for his review, and in utter disbelief he entered a room filled with paper. The record from one patient, a 30-day ICU stay, stacked from the floor to his waist. His initial review indicated “data” from Respiratory Therapy for one day totaled 15 “summary pages”. John Halamka sums it up, “The problem today is that we have too much data. We need to find a way to distill it to what the doctor needs to know, and provide actionable information.”
§ Data – discrete, objective facts such as who, what, when, where
§ Information – linking of who, what, when and where to tell a story
§ Knowledge – information that is culturally understood, such that it explains the how and the why about something or provides insight and understanding
§ Wisdom – placing knowledge in a framework to allow it to be applied to different situations
Unfortunately, we in healthcare are still, for the most part, focused on data – making it discrete, structured and standardized. Oh and of course, interoperable. Just think back to my colleague’s experience, this was one patient’s record from one institution. What if we had “exchanged information” from multiple sites and added that to the mix. The stack for one patient would have touched the ceiling.
Peter Drucker once said, “Knowledge is like the sound of the tree that falls in the forest when no one is there: it doesn’t exist unless people interact with it”. Today we are focused on planting seeds that might one day grow into a forest. As we plant those seeds, it is critical that we consider how clinicians, healthcare business leaders and researchers will interact with, and develop knowledge and wisdom to produce the benefits we anticipate from digital healthcare.
§ What customized views needed by specific users – specialists, management level, internal/external role, etc.
§ What workflow and decision rules help collect, modify and summarize
§ What are the roles for creation, contribution, review, approval, etc
§ What actions are needed to edit, cosign, view, refer, etc.
§ Where is standardization necessary and variability appropriate
§ How is the information best packaged and distributed
§ How do we communicate the value of new information management tools and approaches
Ultimately, in order to meaningfully use our healthcare information and improve performance/outcomes, our organizations will have to develop Information Strategies and Knowledge Management frameworks. As we continue our focus on collection of discrete, structured data, now is the time to begin the conversation about what this really means.
