In a conversation with California Healthline, Wendy Everett — founding president of the New England Healthcare Institute — discussed how innovative technologies could help overcome human error, improve health care quality and reduce costs.
Everett noted that NEHI has worked with the University of Massachusetts Memorial Health Center and two community hospitals on a project to implement telehealth technology in intensive care units. The project — which allowed critical care physicians to remotely monitor ICU patients — helped reduce mortality and length of hospital stay, Everett said.
According to Everett, some health care providers are reluctant to adopt new technologies because of concerns about implementation costs. To address these concerns, Everett said NEHI often recruits consulting firms to analyze whether implementing new electronic health systems could generate long-term savings (California Healthline, 10/11).
The complete transcript of this report is available as a PDF.
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