Molly Coye

Molly is the CEO of HealthTech a research organization that looks at this introduction of new medical technologies, mostly from a provider point of view. She was asked how IT is changing health care in California. The answer is not much yet. She’s also going with the line that you can reduce inadvertent services and improve quality (showed the VA numbers that Health Hero Network improved costs). The VA is rolling it out nationwide because they are stuck with those sick vets for life. Of course in California remote monitoring is not reimbursed, so no one does it.

The tech is there but the social and policy infrastructure is not.

Actually several states are getting further along. Wyoming, Florida and Delaware are getting along, but adopting it in California is tough.

IOM (of which Molly was a big part) called in 2000 for a paperless system in 10 years. Not going to happen, but 10 years from now it might be possible. And all the indicators in a very unscientific survey she did asking about patient electronic connections with providers and plans are very low. She wants a state agenda to accomplish that goal. Also numbers aren’t much better in administrative care and clinical indicators.

Molly thinks we need private and public sector state leadership to get this done. But she calls for 80% of health data to be available online in California within 5 years. She says "We need the leaders to step forward". The Feds will help with the standards, including with the interoperability" but we need to do it ourselves in California.

I think that we should put this on the ballot–it worked with Stem cells! In answer to my question Molly doubts that we can get people riled up about chronic care management technology (and from her time in state government she doesn’t like initiatives!)