MedStar - 60% of a Clinician's Time Spent Searching/Waiting for Information

I pulled this out of a transcript from one of Microsoft's Health IT executives, from when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. 

Our current system is built around the idea of a specific provider prescribing specific treatment for a specific condition. Patients’ health data is locked inside each provider’s silo, without being connected or shared. Physicians are forced to either make treatment and prescription decisions without all available clinical data, or else waste time and resources attempting to aggregate data. MedStar Health’s Washington Hospital Center estimates that 60% of a clinician’s time is spent searching or waiting for information, with only 16% spent on direct patient care.

In addition to this shocking statistic, he also gave a pretty important warning to the Committee - don't stifle innovation by picking certain healthcare models over others.

As Congress considers how best to spur the broad adoption of health IT systems, it should take care not to mandate or prescribe any particular technology or development model. Doing so could deprive healthcare providers of the best available solutions, exclude scores of American companies and workers from competing to supply these solutions, and weaken incentives for further private-sector investment and R&D—just when we as a Nation should be trying to strengthen these incentives. To the extent Congress seeks to influence the development or adoption of health IT systems, it should set forth objective, technology-neutral goals and criteria that these systems should meet, such as those relating to security, privacy, interoperability, and total cost of ownership. It should then open the door to all companies to compete for the opportunity to supply health IT solutions that satisfy these criteria.