Straight talk--new approaches in healthcare. The road to a digital healthcare community. Panel discussion.

Healthcare organizations are often criticized for skeptically deferring the purchase of information technologies that can improve the safety, quality and efficiency of patient care. But some forward-thinking healthcare organizations have broken out of the pack, leveraging leading-edge technologies to gain a competitive advantage. They integrate information technologies across the enterprise, allowing them to compress processes, adapt to market forces and generate the kind of quality data that payers, physicians and patients expect. In this installment of Straight Talk, we discuss the strategies that three organizations have deployed successfully to move themselves along the digital continuum. Modern Healthcare and PricewaterhouseCoopers present Straight Talk. The session on digital healthcare was held on May 3, 2005 at Modern Healthcare's Chicago headquarters. Fawn Lopez, publisher of Modern Healthcare, was the moderator.