Systems Thinking needed to resolve the Healthcare IT Productivity Paradox

Productivity Gains from Health IT Must Await Bigger Changes to Health System | RAND

Productivity gains that can be achieved by widely adopting health information technology are likely to come from the reengineering of health care and may require new measurement tools to accurately gauge their impact, according to a new analysis from RAND Corporation researchers. 

Unraveling the IT Productivity Paradox — Lessons for Health Care — NEJM

Explanations for the IT productivity paradox fell into three categories:

• mis-measurement, 
• mis-management, and 
• poor usability. 

Mis-measurement explanations traced the paradox to shortcomings in research; the latter
two categories highlighted shortcomings in practice. All three categories proved relevant: some productivity effects of IT were hidden because of limitations in the data and analytic methods used to evaluate productivity, and some benefits were limited by ineffective management and poor usability.

In applying Systems Engineering to Healthcare, careful selection of Metrics, MOE and MOP for requirements must be done in order to avoid distortion in the system design.