Experts Available to Discuss Study: VA’s Computer Systems Cost Billions, but Have Big Payback

“WE CONSERVATIVELY ESTIMATE THAT THE VA’S INVESTMENTS IN THE FOUR HEALTH IT SYSTEMS STUDIED YIELDED $3.09 BILLION IN CUMULATIVE BENEFITS NET OF INVESTMENT COSTS BY 2007.”
 

TOPIC:
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has a reputation as an early adopter of electronic medical systems. Now, says a Wall Street Journal blog post, a study in Health Affairs tries to quantify the benefit of VISTA, or Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture.

“We conservatively estimate that the VA’s investments in the four health IT systems studied yielded $3.09 billion in cumulative benefits net of investment costs by 2007,” say the authors, a team from Center for IT Leadership at Partners Healthcare in Charlestown, Mass.

Benefits were found to accrue in the form of reduced workloads, freed workspace and savings from items such as unneeded medical tests and avoided hospital admissions.

VistA's Computerized Patient Record system, which the VA developed and maintains at a cost of $3.6 billion, was nevertheless found to be the biggest savings generator.

SOURCE: Wall Street Journal health blog

EXPERTS: ExpertSource can offer several highly qualified experts to comment on this story.

Rick Jung, Medsphere Systems Corporation

EXPERTISE: electronic health records, healthcare and technology

Richard G. (Rick) Jung has two decades of experience in healthcare and information technology (IT), including sales and executive management positions in traditional healthcare corporations and leadership positions with healthcare IT startups. From 2006 to the present Rick operated an independent consultancy advising private equity firms, hedge funds, and their prospective healthcare IT investment partners on strategy, operations, and business development for the Web 2.0 market. From 2003 to 2006, he served as senior vice president for sales and marketing at MDeverywhere, Inc., a startup providing web-based, automated reimbursement services for physician offices. From 1999 to 2002 Rick was a member of the strategic leadership team and worked as the chief revenue officer for Athenahealth, a provider of automated, web-based healthcare revenue cycle management solutions. Prior to that, he served as interim president and CEO of The Care Group, where he directed turnaround activities for the troubled company. Rick's early years in healthcare were spent learning the business on the payer side from a sales and marketing perspective and as vice president and general manager for U.S. Healthcare, since acquired by Aetna. He is a graduate of the State College of New York, Cortland, where he earned a degree in mathematics and education.
 

Ned Moore, Portico Systems

EXPERTISE: healthcare, technology, IT, provider relations

Ned Moore has been involved in the healthcare industry working with health plans for more than 10 years and understands current market challenges along with their strategic impact. He can speak to the top trends and issues transparency, consumerism and pay-for-performance and how their success hinges on the initiative to improve data quality. As part of his work in the healthcare industry, Ned has consulted with several of the industry top executives regarding industry trends and their strategic outlook. He has also worked closely with healthcare organizations on helping them bridge the gap between business needs and how to apply technology to gain value from their investment.

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