Building a better health care system

But if we fail to upgrade the way care is delivered, it will be like dropping an old engine into a sleek new auto body. It will look great, but we won't achieve optimum performance. Along with the rest of the health-care industry — from providers to consumers, from suppliers to insurers — we must integrate our planning and take advantage of some of the same methods that have revolutionized other industries.  A recent report from the Institute of Medicine — created in conjunction with the National Academy of Engineering — lays out the case.

"The health-care sector is deeply mired in crises related to safety, quality, cost and access that pose serious threats to the health and welfare of many Americans," one of the report's co-editors, Harvard University's Jerome H. Grossman, said when the report was released last summer. "Unfortunately, the health-care system has been very slow to embrace engineering tools and clinical information technologies that could transform it from an underperforming conglomerate of independent entities into a high-performance system."

The report, "Building a Better Deliver System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership" does more than simply state the problem. It suggests that the systems-engineering tools that have transformed so much of American business could do the same for health care, resulting in care that is "safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and patient-centered."

Fortunately for Indiana, key leaders in this transformation are right here in Indiana.

One of the co-editors of the Institute of Medicine report is Dale Compton, is a professor emeritus with Purdue University and a member of the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering. Located in the e-Enterprise Center at Purdue's Discovery Park, the Regenstrief Center exists for the sole purpose of applying the principles of engineering, management, science and technology to design, implement and sustain interdisciplinary solutions to transform the health-care delivery systems.

It also is sharing what it learns. It's working with our hospitals to solve problems and design new systems, and then will share its findings with others. As part of that effort, the Regenstrief Center will conduct a national conference on its West Lafayette campus March 20 and 21. Called "Delivering on Healthcare," the conference will focus on improving health-care systems. It's also looking at possibilities for changing university curriculums and creating short courses for professionals in the field.

These Indiana-based efforts are embodying the spirit of collaboration that many say will be integral to transforming health care. Purdue's Regenstrief Center is funded in part by a three-year, $3 million commitment by the Regenstrief Foundation in Indianapolis, an organization that supports innovative research directed towards improving the efficiency, quality and accessibility of health care. In addition, the center has forged partnerships to create "living laboratories" with organizations such as St. Vincent Health, the 135-physician I.U. Medical Group and Ascension Health, the nation's largest nonprofit health system.

Indiana has long been a major health-care player; I believe that efforts to advance health-care delivery will increase our standing and strengthen our health-based industries. And that, of course, will deliver multiple benefits, from pumping more dollars into our economy to assuring us that we always have easy access to excellent care.

I am continually amazed by the advances I see every day in health-care facility design and construction. But even there, too, we can benefit from systems analysis to make sure that the design is integrated into the entire system.

I'm excited to see Indiana leading the way in efforts to produce advances in health-care delivery. It bodes well for our quality of life, today and for years to come.

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