HealthData Management - December 2012

right security and business relationships, with the right documents, you must cooperate,’ it would happen. Ethically, it’s the right thing to do. ;e ability to coordinate care and keep people out of the emergency room would increase dramatically.”

Name: Charlie Santangelo
Title: Vice President and
Chief Financial O;cer
Organization: Susquehanna Health,
Williamsport, Pa.
Wish List Items: CPOE, Registration
Scorecard

CFO Charlie Santangelo has one over- riding wish when it comes to I. T. “We need information systems to help lower the unit cost of departments throughout the organization,” he says. Operating e;ciency is tops on his mind. Susquehanna’s four hospitals generate some $500 million in total revenue, but Santangelo says the costs associated with earning that revenue can be driven down. His mantra: “perfect billing,” an ideal state in which physician work is captured accurately at the get-go and then billed appropriately—without reworking rejected claims.

Toward that ideal, Santangelo would like to see an expansion of the health system’s CPOE system, from Siemens, as the ;rst step. Susquehanna is currently using electronic order entry on the inpatient side of the house, with nearly 90 percent of related orders entered electronically by physicians. “We need CPOE on the outpatient side,” he says. ;e health system is in the process of building out the system for its 150 employed physicians, and Santangelo says it will come online in 2013. At the same time, the health system is expanding its Siemens ;nancial system, which o;ers an integrated billing module.

In the integrated model, physician or-
ders from the clinic or for outpatient ser-
vices such as lab would draw on data from
a master patient index, which includes
insurance and demographic information.
;e system connects to payers, who in turn
verify electronically if a given test is cov-
ered. “If it appears a test isn’t covered, we
can show the patient they may be respon-
sible,” Santangelo says. An all-electronic
transaction would reduce the cost of the
department o;ering the a;ected service,
he adds. Processing orders that originate
in paper requires rekeying. Ordering tests
electronically “may add a little more cost
to the practice but lowers the cost on the
back-end and more importantly it reduces
the chance of errors,” he says. Currently
many orders are billed without a prelimi-
nary diagnosis, a missing piece of informa-
tion the integrated order entry/billing sys-
tem would catch.

Name: Harry Greenspun, M.D.
Title: Senior Advisor Health Care
Transformation and Technology
Organization: Deloitte Center for Health
Solutions, Washington, D.C.

Wish List Item: Innovation, Insight
When the topic swings to innova- tive technology, Harry Greenspun
brims with enthusiasm. “;is is the most
exciting time in health care in 30 years,” he
says. “;ere is an alignment of incentives,
tremendous innovation and a lot of great
thinking brought to the industry.”
;ere’s also a missing piece that
Greenspun says would spur adoption.
“CIOs need a clearer view into the innova-
tion community,” he says. “;ey are asked
to provide mobile devices, telemedicine
and consumer connectivity. ;ere is a
huge world of innovation they could tap
into. But it’s impossible to track what is
available. It’s di;cult to vet a company
[providing needed technology] and un-
derstand their viability. Do these compa-
nies o;er a real product? Keeping tabs on
that is very challenging and takes more
time than CIOs have to spend.”
Greenspun says member associations
and other organizations in the industry
could do a better job of facilitating vendor
introductions and o;ering a way to assess
products.