For critically ill patients on breathing machines, a simple step drastically improves their survival chances by almost 10% — from 60% to 70%. It involves programming the machine to deliver enough life-sustaining breaths, but not so much that it damages their lungs by overinflating them. Given that this intervention could prevent more suffering than many wonder drugs, one would expect that there would be zero market for a breathing machine that didn’t make lung-preventive ventilation as easy as possible. But in health care, few things work as expected. Fewer than half of patients, and in some hospitals fewer than 20%, receive this life-saving intervention.
What Hospitals Can Learn from Airlines About Buying Equipment
Interoperability matters.
June 13, 2017
Summary.
Health care’s safety and quality challenges are exacerbated by its procurement problem. For years, hospitals have invested in sophisticated devices and IT systems that, on their own, can be awe-inspiring. Yet these technologies rarely share data, let alone leverage it to support better clinical care. If hospitals truly want technologies that save lives and boost productivity, they will need to exert their considerable pressure as purchasers, requiring that manufacturers embrace openness and interoperability and only purchasing devices that support this.
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Take your career to the next level by learning business and finance basics, and developing an enterprise mindset.