White L, Terner C
XIFIN, Carlsbad, California, USA.
J Healthc Inf Manag. 2001 Fall;15(3):295-305.
The initial efforts of e-health have fallen far short of expectations. They were buoyed by the hype and excitement of the Internet craze but limited by their lack of understanding of important market and environmental factors. E-health now recognizes that legacy systems and processes are important, that there is a technology adoption process that needs to be followed, and that demonstrable value drives adoption. Initial e-health transaction solutions have targeted mostly low-cost problems. These solutions invariably are difficult to integrate into existing systems, typically requiring manual interfacing to supported processes. This limitation in particular makes them unworkable for large volume providers. To meet the needs of these providers, e-health companies must rethink their approaches, appropriately applying technology to seamlessly integrate all steps into existing business functions. E-automation is a transaction technology that automates steps, integration of steps, and information communication demands, resulting in comprehensive automation of entire business functions. We applied e-automation to create a billing management solution for clinical reference laboratories. Large volume, onerous regulations, small margins, and only indirect access to patients challenge large laboratories' billing departments. Couple these problems with outmoded, largely manual systems and it becomes apparent why most laboratory billing departments are in crisis. Our approach has been to focus on the most significant and costly problems in billing: errors, compliance, and system maintenance and management. The core of the design relies on conditional processing, a "universal" communications interface, and ASP technologies. The result is comprehensive automation of all routine processes, driving out errors and costs. Additionally, compliance management and billing system support and management costs are dramatically reduced. The implications of e-automated processes can extend beyond the specific transaction problems they are designed to solve. The ready access and communication of process details required by e-automation can apply to many other business functions.
电子健康的最初努力远未达到预期。它们因互联网热潮的炒作和兴奋而兴起，但由于对重要的市场和环境因素缺乏了解而受到限制。电子健康现在认识到遗留系统和流程很重要，存在一个需要遵循的技术采用过程，并且可证明的价值推动采用。最初的电子健康交易解决方案主要针对低成本问题。这些解决方案总是难以集成到现有系统中，通常需要手动接口来支持流程。这种限制尤其使它们对于大量提供商来说不可行。为了满足这些提供商的需求，电子健康公司必须重新思考他们的方法，适当地应用技术将所有步骤无缝集成到现有业务功能中。电子自动化是一种交易技术，它可以自动执行步骤、集成步骤以及满足信息通信需求，从而实现整个业务功能的全面自动化。我们应用电子自动化为临床参考实验室创建了一个计费管理解决方案。大量、繁琐的法规、微薄的利润以及只能间接接触患者给大型实验室的计费部门带来了挑战。再加上过时的、主要是手动的系统，就很明显为什么大多数实验室计费部门都处于危机之中。我们的方法一直是专注于计费中最重要和成本最高的问题：错误、合规以及系统维护和管理。设计的核心依赖于条件处理、“通用”通信接口和ASP技术。结果是所有常规流程实现了全面自动化，消除了错误和成本。此外，合规管理以及计费系统支持和管理成本大幅降低。电子自动化流程的影响可以扩展到它们旨在解决的特定交易问题之外。电子自动化所需的流程细节的随时访问和通信可以应用于许多其他业务功能。
