Dispatch from Denmark

Today I ’m in Denmark speaking at a yearly national healthcare IT conference. Denmark is a remarkable country of 5 million people with a robust social support system.  Healthcare is provided for life as part of being Danish.  If you lose your job, generous unemployment benefits provide for the ongoing well being of you and your family.  Income inequality is among the lowest in the world (see the world mapped by income inequality below)When people gather together in Denmark, there is a sense of common purpose and shared experiences.  The Danish call this “hygge” or coziness.I spoke about the experiences of the Meaningful Use program, the evolving US reimbursement system, and the quest for innovation - especially in the areas of social networking for healthcare, mobile, analytics, and cloud hosting.As I travel the world, I find the most societies are struggling with the same problems - how to improve healthcare quality while reducing cost, how to enhance safety and efficiency with technology, and how to improve the patient experience.Technology is rarely the rate limiting step.  Instead the primary issues are workflow redesign and process improvement.While in Denmark, I heard that government planners proposed implementing automation to save money by eliminating medical secretaries and other team members who would have shared the burden of data entry.  I explained that this would be " penny wise and pound foolish " .  In th...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs