To Understand the Healthcare System, Follow the Money
Healthscape is a map of the US healthcare system and its components. By following the allocation and flow of money in healthcare, the thread of how the organizations, departments, and major players are connected becomes apparent.
Healthscape serves two purposes. The first is to provide the public and professionals interested in the healthcare space a way to increase understanding and explore how all the pieces fit together. The second is to give providers, patient advocacy groups, health policymakers, and health economists a visual communication tool to discuss issues at the higher health systems level.
The US healthcare system is extremely convoluted. To call it “spaghetti” would be an understatement. Because of the complexity, accurately capturing and following associative and financial relationships is difficult. The wider picture of how organizations are connected, how money flows through the US healthcare system is difficult to see. As a result, public discourse around US healthcare issues and reforms are often too narrow in context. Many consumer services and products developed in the health technology space don’t consider long term, primary, secondary or tertiary, downstream effects they will have on the market or for patients in this wider view. …
Open source is something that anyone can change and share, because it’s publicly available under a generous license.
While it first began with computer code, open source now influences how projects and businesses work, and our lives benefit from this open sharing. Open source has grown into a way of participating with many others that asks for transparency, community-based collaboration, and meritocracy. The best ideas float to the top, and you earn trust by what you do and how you amplify the group.
Our internet is infused with open source ideas and services — from how cell phones communicate, to how e-mail is directed from one person to the next, to Linux. …
By Bryson Wong and Jon Follett
with Edwin Choi and Juhan Sonin
The great promise of electronic health records (EHR) is one of improved care through increased communication and care coordination between providers and patients. Yet, despite the legislative push for meaningful use in 2009 and accompanying financial incentives, nearly a decade later, EHR solutions remain immature and not fully realized. The good news is that over 85% of hospitals have implemented an electronic medical record system. …
