Q. Tell us what ignited your passion for quality healthcare?
Dr. Lee: I am a family practice physician, and I joined this company because I see the potential of health information technology and services to address many of the issues that have most frustrated me across my years of clinical practice. I could give numerous examples of how missing information has compromised the care of patients and consumed inordinate amounts of staff time in trying to locate what was missing. Technology introduces a different set of problems, and I am not indifferent to the frustration and burnout that many physicians currently feel based on poorly designed technology that doesn’t fit their workflow or clinical thought process. But I do believe that these problems will be solved, and the next generation of physicians will never experience some of the frustrations that were a daily part of my life in clinical practice.
Q. How is DHIN contributing to the healthcare ecosystem?
Dr. Lee: DHIN was established by the State of Delaware to address the following:
First, securely exchanging health data between care settings (lab to hospital to doctor’s office, etc.) and second, collecting and analyzing health data on behalf of the State of Delaware for public health reporting purposes.
The biggest problem we want to solve is the silos of health data and the resulting fragmentation of healthcare. This creates endless frustration for both patients, who expect their doctors to communicate with each other and know everything about them they need to know; and doctors, who often find that critical elements of health history are not readily accessible to them at the point in time they are needed for good clinical decision making.
In addition to our core services of results delivery and the Community Health Record (our database of more than three million patient records), DHIN has recently added an All Payer Claims Database to our mix of nearly twenty services. By including healthcare claims data with the corresponding clinical information, DHIN is able to provide insights as to the cost and the resulting quality of medical care. This has great potential to assist in driving reductions in healthcare costs here in Delaware and more broadly as part of the triple aim of healthcare: Better quality of care, improved patient satisfaction and lower costs.