At Cedars-Sinai, technology spurs improved, lower cost care

The University of Benin Teaching Hospital implemented an Electronic Medical Records system in 2011 that has now been deployed across more than 75% of its services. The system digitally links all hospital departments, including registration, clinics, laboratories and pharmacies, allowing patient information to flow electronically rather than through physical file transfers, preventing medical records from being lost or misfiled as they were in the paper-based system.

The United States health care system is expensive and enables doctors to prescribe costly brand name medication instead of generic versions. Sutter Health assembles its doctors a few times a week to review with electronic records the prescribing of brand name drugs and the necessity of procedures as an effort to reduce health care costs and to reduce unnecessary tests. In two years, the initiative has saved $30 million.

Digital public infrastructure is helping African countries build more sustainable health systems by replacing fragmented, donor-funded projects with interoperable digital services. In Zambia, for example, the SmartCare Pro electronic health record system uses thumbprints to identify patients and track chronic diseases like TB and HIV, ensuring continuity of care, where it was historically missing.

In Karachi, Pakistan’s Jinnah hospital, a private-public partnership between the government and the business sector have brought in over $35 million in donations. Those donations have led to new equipment, buildings, and systems infrastructure to make sure the patients – nearly 5,000 per day – are receiving modern medical care. While the partnership is underscored by the risk of one party backing out, both sides have clear roles and responsibilities to make sure the regions residents receive the care they need.

The Kentucky metro area has some of the worst air quality in the country, leading to concerning rates of asthma and respiratory disease well above the national averages. But a group called AIR Louisville has implemented a creative, crowdsourced solution that utilizes GPS-enabled inhalers to help patients identify and address asthma patterns based on numerous factors such as avoiding heavily-polluted parts of town, and identifying the best treatments based on lifestyle needs.

Rural hospitals in New Mexico are isolated and scattered across the state, struggling to support low-income communities who have a difficult time getting access to their health care. In 2014, six hospitals banded together to create the New Mexico Rural Hospital Network, a cooperative effort to improve medical care across the small hospitals in the state. The Network has since scaled to ten hospitals and its system has benefited from the exchanges of ideas and an improvement in administrative efficiency.

Hospitals in New York improve healthcare quality and reduce medical costs by staying in frequent contact with patients requiring frequent or long-term care. Montefiore's Accountable Care Organization pulls in care providers from across the medical and social spectrum to improve patient health while curbing expenses.

More than five million Americans have Alzheimer’s or similar illnesses, and that number is growing as the population ages - without any immediate prospect of a cure, advocacy groups have begun promoting ways to offer people with dementia a comfortable decline instead of imposing on them a medical model of care, which seeks to defer death through escalating interventions. An Arizona nursing home offers new ways to care for people with dementia.

Patients in U.S. hospitals suffer high rates of infection due to poor practices such as lack of proper hand-washing and lack of sanitization when inserting central line catheters. The Michigan Health and Hospital Association set out to reduce the rate of infection in their Intensive Care Units by developing a 5-step protocol for nurses and doctors to follow when inserting central lines. What they found was astonishing-- following these simple steps reduced the rate of infection to zero within three months of implementation.

Dr. Brent James, chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, came up with a system for regulating and improving healthcare in the Intermountain medical region and at other hospitals nationwide. He teaches a program called the Advanced Training Program that draws physicians and hospital administrators from all over the country. His method is simple; his team develops best care standards for an array of common medical ailments by regulating the care that is suggested to doctors, monitoring patient outcomes based on these practices, and refining the literature to be even more accurate.