Barry P. Chaiken, MD, MPH has over 25 years’ experience in healthcare information technology, clinical transformation, and business intelligence. He is currently President of DocsNetwork Ltd. and previously worked with the National Institutes of Health, UK National Health Service, McKesson, Infor, and Salesforce/Tableau.
Chaiken is the author of the recently released Navigating the Code: How Technology Transforms the Patient-Physician Journey, a book on healthcare information technology and its potential impact on quality, access, and cost of care.
During his career Chaiken provided expertise in quality and patient safety to provider, payer, and life science organizations helping them utilize information technology to improve clinical and administrative activities. He has served as guest lecturer and consultant on topics including patient safety, clinician adoption of information technology, quality improvement, and healthcare analytics. Chaiken also assisted hospitals and technology firms in the creation of medical software products and services.
Chaiken served as a Healthcare Advisory Board member to numerous organizations as head of DocsNetwork, his own boutique healthcare IT consulting company. He has delivered more than 60 CME lectures, and served on the editorial board of the journal of Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare. Chaiken wrote a column on technology and quality for the journal Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare. He also served as Conference Chair of the annual Digital Healthcare Conference and contributed to WTN Media’s online publications.
Chaiken received his medical degree from Downstate Medical Center, his masters in public health degree in health services administration from the Harvard School of Public Health, and his bachelors of arts degree in psychology from the University at Albany. He acquired his specialty training from the Centers for Disease Control as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer and from the New Jersey State Department of Health as a preventive medicine resident. He is board certified in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health as well as Health Care Quality Management. Chaiken is an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Chaiken served as a Board member (2006-2010), Board Liaison to HIMSS Europe (2006-2009), and Board Chair (2009-2010), and continues his involvement as a Fellow of the Health Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS). He is a guest lecturer in both graduate and undergraduate level courses in healthcare information technology at Boston University’s Questrom School of Management and Tufts University.
Health maintenance organizations, capitated plans, restricted networks, accountable care organizations, all were created to manage the cost of care. But is cost the right place to focus? These strategies were unsuccessful in controlling costs as the U.S. surpassed $4 trillion in healthcare spending. Our focus should be on the very same thing that all our other purchases are based – value. Artificial-intelligence-designed workflow, digital workers, and analytics-influenced processes are just some of the ways revolutionary information technology can bridge the value-cost gap.
Rather than focus on what we spend on healthcare, we must aim to deliver value and then make choices about how we invest our resources.
The U.S. offers the best healthcare services in the world. Or does it? Is a patient in rural Iowa able to access the same level of care as someone in Boston? The recent expanded use of telemedicine helped reduce the regional gap in care, but more evolution is necessary. Our embrace of precision medicine is just beginning, and new information technology tools are helping to make it a reality. Replacement organs will first be harvested from animals, followed by their assembly cell by cell. Combination medications with dosing specific to the individual are printed daily in the home. The patient experience will be seamless and comprehensive
The expansion of healthcare information technology will drive these trends and help us secure the best care for ourselves and family.
Quality, safety, access, and affordability of care. Sure they are top of mind for all patients, but is that all we should care about? Aren’t we consuming healthcare services and therefore that makes us consumers? Perhaps our patient experience should mimic our consumer experience where care is patient/consumer-centered. And that includes how we interact with our providers, payers, and caregivers
The technology we use in our daily lives can be applied to enhance our patient experience and help ensure we obtain the best possible health outcomes.
Healthcare, by its nature, is not a particularly innovative endeavor. Unlike autos, which are always changing, there are set, time-tested ways to practice medicine. Yet does that mean physicians must adhere to business and administrative practices and processes that are fifty, seventy, a hundred years old?
Dr. Barry P. Chaiken thinks not. In this he is not alone, to be sure. In proposing a practical solution, he is. Chaiken, with his experience as a physician and his belief that information technology is the greatest problem-solving tool, has drawn these two endeavors together to solve the greatest medical and business problem of the 21st century.
The result: Revolutionary Healthcare Information Technology.
The author's simple, convincing thesis is based on a simple premise: we must open ourselves to change. Once we do so, he explains how this openness can help us out of our longstanding malaise and guide us toward a transformative healthcare experience for both the patient and the physician. With painstaking honesty and practicality, Navigating the Code presents a simple, factual, businesslike approach to solving healthcare's problems. But don't take his word for it: the book presents the views of eighteen thought-leaders in medicine and healthcare information technology.
Dr. Chaiken delineates the RHIT solution in five Parts:
Part I explains the depth and breadth of healthcare's problems, worldwide, then its issues with technology, change and business management;
Part II presents RHIT as the essential tool for change management and the transformation which accrues from its implementation;
Part III develops a deeper, more encompassing understanding of change management for creating an integrated workflow for clinicians, patients, and the business;
Part IV explores the application of RHIT and its transformational impact on the Hippocratic Code of quality, access, outcomes, and financial investment by both the patient and the provider; and
Part V draws everything together in two chapters, in the marriage of economics and interoperability, and the emerging connected, adaptive healthcare organization.