There seems to be a truism about the health care industry being 10-20 years behind other industries in terms of information and communication technology adoption and use. I’ve never really challenged this truism, but events of the past few days make me wonder.
I’ve started exercising again and even joined a private fitness gym/club. Well, upon joining, I had to complete an entire battery of forms. We complain about duplication in health care, but I was writing out my basic information again and again on several forms. Also, when trying to make arrangements for fitness testing and to meet with a trainer, there was no such thing as “online acces”.
Now that I think about it, even the financial services industry doesn’t have complete electronic scheduling that we all seem to demand in health care. I mean, if you want to meet with a consultant, you still need to pick-up a phone (or email) someone and make arrangements. As far as I know, you can’t just go to a web-site and peruse the schedules of available consultants and pick a time. I suppose you can do the most in the airline/auto rental industry by just going on the web and clicking to your fancy.
My point is that maybe we’re not so far behind in health care as everyone likes to state or think. That doesn’t mean that the status quo is acceptable. Maybe we’re not doing as bad as some think.