Printer-friendly format

A less sexy, but possibly high-yielding, field of health IT research got under way this spring at the University of Arkansas (UA). In partnership with Wal-Mart and Blue Cross Blue Shield, UA announced in March the formation of a new program, the Center for Innovation in Health Care Logistics (CIHL), helmed by Ron Rardin, PhD. Proctor & Gamble also recently joined the effort as a major partner.

Like that of the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care, the mission of CIHL is to take a close look at healthcare IT processes, but its focus is much narrower. CIHL’s research concentrates on healthcare supply chains and materials delivery mechanisms and the ways that the power of information systems can be harnessed to enhance their efficiency and reduce waste.

Money lost to inefficient supply chain and logistics processes is a huge problem. “After personnel, it’s the biggest thing people spend money on in healthcare, plus it has a direct connection to patient services in many areas,” Rardin said. “There’s a lot of chaos right now, where records and materials are lost, misplaced, late, have to be tracked down.”

Wal-Mart’s vice chairman John Menzer said CIHL’s work will help fill a large information gap in the healthcare system.

“The best example of this need was Hurricane Katrina. Medical records, property records, court records were lost. Entire family histories — medical, cultural and otherwise — were gone in an instant, and the entire region is still recovering from this massive loss of information,” Menzer said.

The main finding of supply chain work in other industries is that careful tracking of inventories can eliminate a lot of inventory investments. “Millions of dollars have been saved by other companies along those lines,” he said.
From 2000 to 2003, Rardin, an industrial engineer, led the National Science Foundation’s efforts to create a program that sponsored research related to healthcare delivery. When he relocated to Arkansas in January after 20 years at Purdue University, he was immediately approached by Wal-Mart about this opportunity.

As an industry, healthcare’s adoption of information services technologies is decades behind other industries. Banks, Rardin said, spend four times as much on similar non-clinical technologies as are available to healthcare facilities.

“The actual mechanical processes of getting patients in the right place and getting materials to them and getting everything scheduled, that’s still equivalent to where the automotive industry and other industries were in, say, the 1970s,” he said. “It’s largely due to a pervasive wariness about and lack of investment in IT.”

Lack of funding can be a significant barrier to healthcare IT implementations, but Rardin is hopeful that the applications of the center’s research will reap healthy financial benefits for hospitals and clinics. It’s a win-win situation, he said, as streamlining processes has the potential to save enormous amounts of money, which can then be allocated to other areas and improve patient care.


August 2007

Tags:

None

Login and voice your opinion!

Do you know someone else who would like to see this?
Your Email:
Their Email:
Comment:	(Will be included with e-mail)
Secret Code	In the box below, enter the Secret Code exactly as it appears above *