US HEALTH CARE AND INFORMATION DEMANDS

The drive towards an increase in accountability in the US health care environment is clearly going to increase the need for information, both in terms of efficiency and capture and control of data. Accountability implies reliable source data, say analysts at Alex Brown. This in turn requires a number of support systems and standard measures of performance. These performance criteria must include cost and quality considerations and yet have to be gathered in a manner that is itself not cost-prohibitive.

Increasingly, therefore, providers of health care services are adopting more sophisticated clinical information systems. Coupled with this, payers in the system are seeking ways to measure the cost and quality of providers. Interestingly, effective collation of data by providers is now being recognized as a tool to attract more business, they note.

The increase in technology has given rise to the term "integrated health care system." IHCSs are vertical networks of care providers that include physician groups, acute care hospitals and outpatient facilities. The networks have been in existence for some time, although the concept of the IHCS is a new term. In addition to this, the recent increase in community-based health care provision needs more sophisticated information systems to connect centralized and ancillary service providers.