在大数据方面，这家农村医疗公司比硅谷做得都好

几年前，盖辛格医疗系统公司的高管们发现，很多来自宾西法尼亚州的医生直到深夜还在登录该系统的电子病历系统。之所以会出现这种情况，是因为医生们要赶在夜里补白天没时间做的文书工作。盖森格的CEO大卫·费恩伯格深知，这种昼夜连轴转的工作模式已经成了美国医疗界的通病。在仔细研究了相关数据后，他做了一个大胆的决定：将给予65岁及以上老人的预约时间延长一倍。

现在，盖森格医疗系统的医生每次接待一名老年患者需要40分钟的时间，结果他们每天接待的病人少了很多。对于这个医院系统来说，这个决定的代价似乎是很高昂的。但随着时间的推移，事实证明，它并不是一笔赔钱的买卖。因为老年病人在经过更彻底的检查后，他们出现在急诊室里的概率降低了，也不太容易因为某个在诊断中没谈到的症状就申请住院治疗。

如果说数据是当代的石油，服务宾州300万患者的盖森格医疗系统可以说就是医疗界的沙特阿拉伯了。盖森格成立于1915年，它是一个综合性的医疗系统，既直接为病人提供医疗，也提供医保服务。更重要的是，它可以同时收集病人的医疗和医保数据。1996年，盖森格成为美国第一批采用全功能的电子病历系统的医疗服务部门之一，此后它还不断在这一领域进行投资。现在病人只需一部iPhone就能携带他们的病历。

病人的临床诊断和医保报销数据被整合在了一起，通过系统即可进行搜索。盖森格的医生可以像使用谷歌搜索那样，实时简便地搜索哪怕是医生处方或医疗影像这种零散的数据。

在过去几年里，盖森格的系统又添加了不少新功能，比如可以合理安排手术室的使用（以往每台手术只给安排45分钟，哪怕明知医生会超时），指示出成本异常的现象（比如哪些医生的医疗耗材用得特别多），以及根据优先级对医疗影像审查进行排序等等。用人工智能程序训练过的电脑甚至可以识别出哪些病人有潜在的中风风险。

CEO费恩伯格表示，大数据并未使盖森格的医生和护士的工作性质发生变化，它只是另一个能帮助他们更好地治疗患者的工具。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎 

A couple of years ago, executives at Geisinger Health discovered that, late at night, a number of the Pennsylvania health system’s doctors were still logged into the system’s electronic health records. The reason? Physicians were staying up doing all the administrative work they couldn’t get done during the day. Geisinger CEO David Feinberg knew that burnout had reached epidemic levels within America’s medical community, largely for this reason—and so, after reviewing the data, he made a bold decision: He doubled the length of appointment time given to patients 65 and older.

Geisinger physicians now spend 40 minutes with those patients, and as a result, see many fewer per day—an expensive decision for the system, it would seem. But in time, the data proved it was financially sound. Here’s why: Older patients, having undergone a more thorough exam, were far less likely to show up at the ER or require hospitalization for an issue that didn’t get discussed in the visit.

If data is the oil of modern day, Geisinger— which serves 3 million patients in rural Pennsylvania—may just be health care’s Saudi Arabia. Founded in 1915 as an integrated system—it both cares for patients and insures them (and, more important, gets data from both roles)— Geisinger became, in 1996, one of the first U.S. health systems to adopt a full-featured EHR. And they’ve invested in it ever since. Patients can even carry their records on an iPhone.

With such clinical and claims data merged together in a searchable form, Geisinger physicians can query data—even in unstructured forms like doctor’s notes and medical images— in real time, and as easily as a Google search.

In the past few years, its newfound capabilities have helped it rationalize the use of ORs (previously, every operation was slotted for 45 minutes, even if surgeons were known to run over), pinpoint costly variability in the system (such as surgeons who spend more on supplies), and prioritize the review of medical images. An A.I.-trained computer, for instance, identifies those of potential stroke victims.

For CEO Feinberg, all this big data isn’t a qualitative change for his physicians and nurses, he says. It’s just another tool to help them take better care of their patients.