Question & Answer with Eric Paul, Graduate Pharmacist, Baxter Corporation
Barry Jacobs: What are the challenges facing hospitals today?
Eric
Paul: Hospitals are challenged to ensure that they are providing the best
care possible within the constraints of the dollars that are available. They
are also under cost pressure to service an aging adult population, which has
a higher frequency of readmission.
BJ: I understand there are new efforts going on with Baxter to overcome
some of these issues. Can you talk about that?
EP: The industry has said there are three things they have to do to be successful in meeting the challenges. The first thing they have to do is provide technology to ensure that clinicians have the best possible decision-support in real time.
The second thing is to have high accountability for best-care practices, so that the industry can ensure that all clinicians are following those best practices.
And the third step is to have information available so they can analyze actual results and make sure that they're continually improving their best practices.
Baxter has a comprehensive vision for providing real-time, point-of-care technology that supports those needs in the hospital.
BJ: Less than 6 percent of hospitals have CPOE. Jeff Goldsmith and John Glaser at Partners are both talking about computerized physician order entry as a key element that needs to be improved at hospitals. What do you think that's going to look like in the next five years?
EP: My kudos to the early pioneers who did the work to try to understand how technology could support clinical practice. In the next five years, I think there will be a very high adoption rate of CPOE. But CPOE in itself is a bit of a misnomer; CPOE is part of a clinical infrastructure. There's no question that the things that CPOE entails need to be available so that doctors can make the best order decisions. But the process has to be integrated so that, in effect, we can make sure that whatever the doctor's orders are, they are effectively carried out, and we can see the results of those orders in real time.
One of the challenges in the industry is to adopt technology that provides an integrated approach rather than a narrow focus on CPOE. CPOE has certainly been a big driver of change and will continue to accelerate change. The challenge is to find technology that works the way the doctors want to work so that it doesn't impede their normal activity and reduce their productivity rates.
BJ: What is Baxter's vision?
EP: We have an overarching vision of, and a commitment to, a safer health care environment. "Safer" has a number of meanings: it certainly means quality; it does mean safety; and I think it means wellness.
So our vision is to be sure that safe, quality, wellness-oriented care is available wherever decisions are made. There will be an ever-increasing demand to have information in the patient's hands. It's a new world out there, and patients are doing a tremendous amount of Internet research on their illnesses or on the prevention of illness, based on the literature that we see.
Our vision is to be able to provide them with their record — their clinical patient record or their electronic medical record — in the most appropriate fashion, so they can see how they're progressing, and perhaps better maintain their chronic illnesses or prevent potential illnesses.
We see that technology will be invaluable in supporting that process. So, our horizon is beyond the walls of an institution and really to the point of care, and that could be the home.
