Arkansas Children’s Hospital exec: Technology key to improving poor health rankings

Jonathan Goldberg, chief information officer for Arkansas Children’s Hospital, said the health care industry is ripe for technology applications and disruption from the Internet of Things to telemedicine which certainly have their places in health care.

Speaking during the recent Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit, Goldberg shared various of uses of technology being used inside and outside the ACH to make the lives of children better today and healthier tomorrow which is core to its mission.

“Some sobering results from the United Health Survey puts Arkansas 49th out of 50 states in terms of women and children’s health. That proves we have a lot of room to improve and we are certainly looking for ways to solve this issue,” Goldberg said.

Only Mississippi ranked lower than Arkansas in the report released by United Healthcare in September. Smoking, tobacco use among youth, obesity, diabetes, and food insecurity were areas where Arkansas ranked in the bottom 5 states. Goldberg said roughly half the state is underserved in terms of pediatric care for the population, with Crawford County being one of those underserved areas. He said it’s not feasible to put pediatric centers in every unserved area given the shortage of doctors today.

“We are going to be relying more telemedicine, mobile clinics, school-based health, outreach clinics and satellite hospitals like the one going up in Northwest Arkansas to help us reach more of the state’s children. We have a plan by 2020 to expand coverage to more outlying areas of the state,” he said.

Late next year, ACH Northwest will be up and running with a goal of seeing patients as 2018 gets underway. ACH is also testing telehealth in the Benton School District with plans to expand that program over the next three years.

Given that ACH is centrally located in Little Rock, it’s imperative the hospital have its own airline to transport children into the Little Rock facility. Angel One has three helicopters in its fleet and it makes about six trips each day, he said. Goldberg admitted that helicopters aren’t about new technology but they are cool and the kids love to watch them take off and land, so the hospital linked the helipad area into the monitors inside patients rooms so the kids can watch.

He said the hospital also invested in an entertainment system called CareHub that offers young patients the opportunity to play video games using their televisions are monitors.

Many patients come to the hospital through the emergency room which can at times be a full house. The hospital has data ports in a dashboard format that allow health professionals to track every patient’s progress through the emergency room with complete visibility.

When it comes to documenting care, he said ACH uses systems that allow it to be proactive. The system will track medication prescribed and quickly dispatch warnings for drug interactions and keep track of the last medication given which can be especially crucial when prescribing for pediatrics.

“Even a slight overdose could be fatal in small children,” he added.

The Little Rock hospital has 100 neonatal intensive care beds with 75 babies at any given time. He said tracking infections in the hospital is made easier with technology and that too, is critical with the tiniest of patients.

Doctors at ACH also can monitor a patient’s vital statistics from their cell phones or other smart devices. Phone calls are taken via bluetooth technology so they can keep their hands free.

Goldberg said more doctors are using electronic records which can allow information to to be sent to different doctors who see a patient. A drawback with electronic records sharing is there is no standard in how health care is communicated so it can make it hard for doctors in one area to fully understand the records made in another area. He said there is a chat function which is useful so long as there is a secure federally-approved network to transmit the chat.

A bigger issue in health care is that the reimbursement model incentivizes someone being sick. Goldberg said technology advances are helpful in preventative health which is in direct conflict with the present reimbursement system.

“At some point this reimbursement system will change where it’s more proactive, where we can be paid for helping keep people healthy. But who knows how long that will take,” Goldberg said.