Navigating the Code

The healthcare industry, unlike many others, runs on time-tested ways to practice excellence in medicine. But does that mean adherence to practices and processes that are fifty, seventy, even a hundred years old?

Dr. Barry P. Chaiken thinks not. His 25+ years of experience as a physician and an informaticist, he believes information technology is healthcare's greatest problem-solving tool for resolving the biggest medical and business problems of the 21^st century.

The solution: Revolutionary Healthcare Information Technology.

The author's convincing thesis is based on a single premise: we must open ourselves to change. Once we commit, he explains how this openness can help us out of our longstanding malaise and guide us toward a transformative healthcare experience for both the patient and the physician. With painstaking honesty and practicality, Navigating the Code presents a simple, factual, businesslike approach to solving healthcare's problems. But don't take his word for it: the book presents the views of eighteen thought-leaders in medicine and healthcare information technology.

Dr. Chaiken delineates the RHIT solution in five Parts:

Part I explains the depth and breadth of healthcare's problems, worldwide, then its issues with technology, change and business management;

Part II presents RHIT as the essential tool for change management and the transformation which accrues from its implementation;

Part III develops a deeper, more encompassing understanding of change management for creating an integrated workflow for clinicians, patients and the business;

Part IV explores the application of RHIT and its transformational impact on the Hippocratic Code of quality, access, outcomes and financial investment by both the patient and the provider; and

Part V draws everything together in final chapters: the marriage of healthcare economics and interoperability, creating the connected, adaptive healthcare organization.