Tragically, in a world full of wonderful healthcare inventions and opportunities there is only so much money to be invested. Each year only a certain amount of areas can be invested in, with the hopes of it being spent in the right areas to improve the world of healthcare. But are there areas of healthcare that are getting passed over? Are there areas that desperately need more investment and are just getting skipped because not enough people are talking about them? Searching for the answers to these questions in the hopes of them getting more investments in the future, we reached out to our absolutely incredible Healthcare IT Today Community to see what areas of healthcare they think need more investment and why. The following video is a compilation of their answers.
BJ Boyle, Chief Product Officer at PointClickCare – I think we really need to focus on our seniors and the post-acute care business. The senior surge is here and it’s really been a part of our industry that’s been underfunded, and underserved, and we think technology can really make a difference.
Mitesh Rao, Founder and CEO at OMNY Health – Community research. There’s so much out there on advancements in healthcare and science that don’t reach the hard-to-serve, underserved communities in this country.
Sri Velamoor, EVP, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at NextGen Healthcare – If you look at the majority of where the spend is going in healthcare outside of drugs, nearly 17% of all healthcare dollars are going towards just moving transactions between all the different healthcare entities, so we spend over $450 billion a year just making sure payments, claims, prior auth, and eligibility happens. I think that’s an area where we need significantly greater focus to reduce the amount of friction we have in the system.
Kat McDavitt, President at Innsena – 1 million percent public health. Public health has been a little bit nascent from an investment perspective, there isn’t a lot of innovation in that space and part of that is because investors and startups don’t necessarily understand how to navigate the very tricky funding environment.
Ritesh Patel, Senior Partner, Global Digital Health at FINN Partners – I firmly believe that the technology that I have seen in the exhibition floors should be applied fair and square to rural health. We have got a massive issue in rural health. I know the infrastructure bill will add infrastructure where we can get connectivity, but if these guys could figure out a way, as opposed to going to work in New York, or Chicago, or LA, how can you do this in West Virginia, and Montana, and Wyoming? I think it’d be amazing.
Barry Dellecese, Vice President of Product Management at ClearDATA – In general, cybersecurity is still a problem. We recently did a survey where we spoke to over 200 IT executives and they told us that cybersecurity is the number one barrier to them doing more in the cloud and innovating. What’s interesting is that even though they see that as a problem, 71% of them reported that their budgets are increasing. So despite it being a problem and despite their budgets increasing, it still continues to be a major barrier.
Susan Pasley, Chief Nursing Officer at CareRev – Right now you may know that there’s a proposed rule that would impact the post-acute space that would set limits for staffing minimums in the post-acute care space, but that proposed rule doesn’t have any kind of financial backing with it. We’re seeing this at the national level, but we’re also seeing this at the state level where states are proposing staffing ratios and there really isn’t any financial backing behind it. So we need to address it in a much more broad way by infusing investment into nursing schools, educators, and how do we actually build up more interest for folks to enter into the nursing profession.
Jeff Gartland, CEO at Relatient – Unfortunately, I’d honestly say still integration and interoperability. It’s a problem that I’ve been working on for over 15 years and the reality in the world is there are some great tools out there but they’re all still very cumbersome to work with and challenging to really get true liquidity of data in a free-flowing fashion.
Huge thank you to BJ Boyle, Chief Product Officer at PointClickCare, Mitesh Rao, Founder and CEO at OMNY Health, Sri Velamoor, EVP, Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at NextGen Healthcare, Kat McDavitt, President at Innsena, Ritesh Patel, Senior Partner, Global Digital Health at FINN Partners, Barry Dellecese, Vice President of Product Management at ClearDATA, Susan Pasley, Chief Nursing Officer at CareRev, and Jeff Gartland, CEO at Relatient for taking the time out of your day to come and speak with us! And thank you to all of you for reading this article and watching the video! We could not do this without your support. What area of healthcare do you think needs more investment and why? Let us know in the comments down below or over on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!
