While it's a growing trend, not many people are yet willing to travel to foreign countries for medical procedures. This is prompting medical tourism promoters to look at domestic medical tourism, a trend that is also growing. In the meantime, hospitals nationwide are working to attract new patients here as well as international patients.
The CIO can no longer be just the go-to IT person for the organization. As CIO, you are now expected to be able to help manage initiatives that are larger and affect more parts of the organization. But hold on: Even that's not good enough.
"The 'A' game of today is tomorrow's 'B' game. You might feel like you are doing a pretty darn good job, and you probably are, but that is just no longer good enough." That blunt assessment comes from John Glaser, vice president and CIO of Partners HealthCare System.
He and Judy Kirby, president of Snelling Executive Search, spoke to CIOs in a standing-room-only presentation on the "Evolution of the CIO" at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives' Fall CIO Forum in Henderson, NV, last week.
To the obvious dismay of the audience, the two talked about how the role of the CIO is expanding and becoming increasingly difficult and complicated.
OK, maybe that's not what CIOs wanted to hear, but they sure did listen.
As budgets get tighter, CIOs are increasingly being asked to do more with less and to deliver solid results the first time, with no room for mistakes. "The board is basically thinking, 'we've blessed you with this money, now show us what you can do,'" says Glaser. Certainly with the current financial market woes, missing project deadlines or going over budget by even the smallest amount will simply not be acceptable, Glaser and Kirby said.
And they both say the skill set required for the job of CIO has evolved so much over the past 10 years, that many of today's CIOs do not even have a background in technology. They, of course, still must be able to understand technology and IT trends, but these days it's more important to be the consummate executive making many of the same types of managerial decisions as the CEO or COO would.
"The CIO role is increasingly being cast as a strategist and executive with more attention being placed on the CIO's contribution to the overall business strategy," says Glaser.
You may be asking yourself why the shift is happening. A lot of it, say the speakers, has to do with money. CIOs are increasingly being asked to do more with less. While the demands placed on you will not slow down, the budgets to meet those demands will remain the same or, in some cases, decline, says Kirby. Which means you are going to have to master the ability to do more with less.
If you want to become a "competitive asset" to the organization you work for or if you want to move into a role of greater responsibility Glaser and Kirby say you'll have to be willing to step out of your comfort zone and do things you might find unpleasant or risky, like releasing a little control and delegating to subordinates.
And you'll need to develop your communication skills; both speakers repeatedly emphasized the importance of being able to express your goals and plans to the rest of the executive team in a coherent way, in a way that emphasizes how IT can solve the problem, rather than why IT would be good to have.
"Don't lead conversations with IT. Lead with the revenue stream, give the business case, then offer up how IT can fix it," Glaser says. Because in tight financial times, this might be the most successful way to get your projects funded.
Bottom line: The next generation of CIO is going to have to step up and function at the same level as the rest of the executive team.
Kathryn Mackenzie is technology editor of HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at kmackenzie@healthleadersmedia.com.
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Those of us in the media love to report on emerging trends. It gives us a chance to tell readers something new and different. Plus, we get to look smart and offer up the prediction—often unsubstantiated and made in general terms—that whatever the trend is, you should expect it will have a major impact and become commonplace.
But what if the subject of investigation isn't much of a trend at all? Well, there's the beauty of calling something a trend; it's such a generic, subjective, and overused word that you really can't go wrong.
Find a few examples of uninsured Americans going abroad for elective surgery and presto, you've got yourself a trend.
Peter Hayes, director of associate health and wellness at Hannaford Bros. Co., a Scarborough, ME-based supermarket, told me that when he was researching whether to add a medical travel benefit, he was surprised the press coverage was mostly favorable.
I'm not so surprised. It's easier for a reporter to find an anecdote about a successful procedure than an unsuccessful one. In many cases, I suspect these journalists got their interviews with medical travel patients through international hospitals or medical travel facilitators. Plus, the medical travel story still has a newness about it that will appeal to readers, so no need to get bogged down with facts that don't support the claim that droves of Americans are willing to leave the country for care.
Not that I can blame reporters for not digging deeper into the medical travel trend. After all, the quantitative research on outbound medical travel is hard to come by and the few recent studies in circulation don't exactly mesh.
The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions estimates that 750,000 Americans traveled abroad for care in 2007.
McKinsey & Company puts the number of outbound medical travel at no more than 85,000 inpatients.
The latest edition of Patients Beyond Borders says last year more than 180,000 Americans traveled overseas for care.
On the other hand, it is just as easy for medical travel's detractors in the U.S. to dismiss talk of a growing trend as mere rhetoric and exaggeration. A recent American Medical News story dismisses the medical travel trend out of hand, pointing to the medical travel facilitator Healthplace America as a sign that those who would promote outbound medical tourism in the U.S. are moving on to other ventures.
But the detractors might have a point. Consider that Hannaford hasn't reported sending a single employee to Singapore for care, but has managed to use the medical travel benefit to get counter-offers from U.S. providers.
There are real trends, of course, hidden behind all the hype. Foremost, providers in South America, Asia, and the Middle East really are developing healthcare organizations that rival U.S. healthcare in terms of quality, value, and experience. I'm just not yet convinced that the outbound travel trend is as prevalent as some with obvious agendas would have us believe. And given today's global economic downturn, I don't think we'll see a major shake-up in the way American's get healthcare anytime soon.
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MeVis Medical Solutions, Inc. has announced that it has completed the release of a new system for computer-aided-detection, advanced visualization, and analysis of multi-slice CT exams. The MeVis Visia CT Lung System examines CT images and automatically marks areas that warrant further examination.
The National Business Coalition on Health's 13th Annual Conference is scheduled for Nov. 9-11 in Washington, DC. For more information visit the National Business Coalition on Health Web site.
Dell Inc., Intel, and Motion Computing Inc. have launched the Mobile Point of Care Wireless Assessment service, which enables healthcare customers to assess whether their wireless network is reliable and can provide full coverage. The service helps healthcare clients determine whether or not their wireless network will be able to provide access to patient information.
John Halamka, MD, chief information officer at Harvard Medical School, says the country needs new incentives for electronic record keeping. In his "Dear President" letter, Halamka offers Harvard's next administration a three-point plan to encourage adoption of health IT.
Microsoft continues to line up HealthVault partners: the latest is Connecticut-based health insurer Aetna. Members currently using Aetna's electronic Personal Health Record feature will be able to transfer those records to Microsoft's HealthVault in November. In addition, Yahoo is bulking up its Health portal with content from HealthGrades and Waterfront Media's Everyday Health Network. HealthGrades provides hospital and physician ratings and reviews, which Yahoo will integrate into a new, searchable physician database along with related Yahoo Answers and Yahoo Group discussions.
Pamela Morris, president and CEO of CareSource Management Group in Dayton, OH, the fourth largest Medicaid HMO in the United States, talks about how winning the 2008 Top Leadership Teams in Healthcare award for health plans recognizes the commitment CareSource employees have made to consumers.
California is one of 35 states that arranges health coverage for people rejected by commercial companies because they have blemished medical histories. This "medically uninsurable" group accounts for about an eighth of the 5 million Californians who lack health insurance. Most are self-employed, work for companies that don't provide insurance or don't have a job. But California's publicly subsidized high-risk pool has atrophied over the tenure of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger even as the governor put the plight of the uninsured at the top of his political agenda.
