Tim's WhatMatters Blog 

With the increased focused on ACOs, provider organizations must come to grips with a key requirement if their ACOs are to be successful. This model requires taking financial risk and risk management requires information processing and management capabilities far greater than what we have today. This will become an IT arms race.

Like the running back with the big contract who is now a little slow, assets become liabilities very fast. Barnes and Noble stores were the secret to selling books just a few years ago. Now that Amazon sells more Kindle e-reader downloads than hardcover books, the technology advantage is only accelerating. Technology is an incredibly disruptive force once it gathers steam. So what does this mean in healthcare?

Manufacturing has been investing in IT longer than most any sector, and not surprisingly, saw its productivity grow almost 60% faster over the past 20 years than the economy as a whole. I am not an economist, but as a healthcare guy, finding myself again right at the beginning stage of an IT investment boom, I would suggest there are some long view lessons we can learn from our industry brethren who went 20 years before us. The idea that healthcare IT can, and will, lower costs makes too much logical sense.