Earlier this week I spoke at Atlanta Healthcare IT Leadership Summit on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and what I call “accountable tech." I was pleasantly surprised to learn most of the audience agreed that ACOs can’t succeed without the right technology but am continuously disappointed as to how little we as an industry are doing about it.

Accountable tech is health IT that truly enables the slow but emerging move from fee for service (FFS) based payments to value-driven and outcomes based payments. Healthcare is not some system of payments or abstract concept of service — it’s what emerges from the millions of micro interactions and daily communications between providers and patients. Accountable tech starts with connected EHRs and fosters next-generation solutions that improves the relationship providers have with their patients during every encounter using prospective and predictive tech, not through retrospective analytics and quarterly reports. We’re suffering from disconnected EHRs and if we don’t fix that soon, ACOs and value-driven and outcomes-based care won’t succeed fast enough or at enough scale for it to matter in the long run.

Next week I’ll be talking about connected EHRs and accountable tech at TCBI’s Medical Device Connectivity Conference in the DC area. Please join me and other great speakers that will discuss how cooperative, coordinating, and connected medical devices can improve the value of your EHR investments.