Payers, providers and patients need to collaborate on care management, and technology can provide an effective meeting ground for improving care and efficiency, a newly released white paper suggests.

"Much critical information – on prescribed medicines, checkup results, lab results, ongoing care, payments and more – still remains unshared across a variety of industry constituents," concludes the report, by EDS, a Plano, Texas-based company that offers IT services to a broad range of healthcare customers.

"Ties between the various holders of the information often remain fragmented. More than just an inconvenience, however, this lack of communication is financially costly and, worse, disrupts the goal of providing patients with the best care possible," the report adds.

In the report, EDS suggests the use of what it calls collaborative care management. "As healthcare constituencies work together more and more to strengthen the linkage between preventive management, disease management and information integration, costs will be better contained and patient outcomes improved," the report concludes.

Information technology now exists to enable collaboration, data sharing and consumer empowerment. EDS suggests that Web-based applications hold the most promise for care collaboration around patients.

While there's been general agreement that entities in the healthcare system need to work together to improve care delivery, it's been little more than lip service, acknowledged Mark J. Roman, vice president and global healthcare leader for EDS.

But the stakes appear to be rising and the stage set for more cooperation between various stakeholders, Roman said.

"The pain points have started to get to the point that if we as industry participants don't start focusing on correcting the problems, someone else will," he said.

Momentum will build for more collaboration because of cost constraints and growing consumer empowerment, Roman said.

"Everyone is focusing on assuring the best level of care for the lowest cost," he said. "Care management, as this paper suggests, can play into that, keeping members with chronic conditions from needing acute care."

"And now that patients are starting to pay more out of pocket, they will want to be more knowledgeable about what the treatment options are," he said. "Care management will play a role in patients' decisions on how they manage their lifestyle and how they manage their own conditions."