by Thomas Dahlborg

Question: Should we be spending our health care dollar on what is typically considered innovative and sexy and fundable--essentially, on more technology? Or would we be better off focusing more of our attention on lifestyle, nutrition and exercise, creating models that allow for relationship and trust between a patient and physician to be developed, in turn creating a system that promotes ample time for engagement and true learning to occur specific to lifestyle changes, improving nutrition and exercising appropriately?

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If two recent studies are any indication, spending money on the latter will have a far bigger impact than the former. For example, a November 2009 study published in the American Journal of Medicine entitled "Hospital Computing and the Costs and Quality of Care: A National Study", conducted by David U. Himmelstein, MD, concluded that technology has "a modest impact on process measures of quality, but no impact on administrative efficiency or overall costs." Himmelstein says that ultimately, guesses trying to figure out exactly how the widespread adoption of computers will affect cost savings and efficiency improvements can only be "premature at best."

The other study, a report from the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR)/World Cancer Research Fund, discussed by Dr. Ranit Mishori in a December 2009 article in Parade, confirms that a healthy lifestyle can have a dramatic impact on breast cancer.

The study concludes that women can cut their risk of breast cancer by 50 percent just by watching their weight, exercising on a daily basis, breast-feeding their babies and limiting alcohol intake. Mishori also quotes Susan Higginbotham, the director of research at AICR, as saying: "We estimate that almost 40 percent of breast cancer cases in the U.S.--about 70,000 cases a year--could be prevented by making these straightforward, everyday changes."

Based on these two studies, I would have to say that health IT investments only have a modest impact on quality and overall costs, while lifestyle investments can dramatically impact a person's life, as seen with the breast cancer outcomes.

Now is the time to reset our priorities. We truly need to focus on the return-on-investment of our healthcare priorities, improving the health and lives of individuals, our communities and our nation. Reprioritizing our healthcare spending with a renewed focus on improving lifestyle, nutrition and exercise (and leveraging technology as a tool in same) I think will have significant benefit on the health of our nation and our nation's citizens, and will significantly decrease our health expense trend line both short term and long term.

Thomas H. Dahlborg, M.S.M., is executive director of the physician practice True North Health Center, where he focuses on improving growth while ensuring access for the uninsured and the elderly. He has 21 years of experience creating competitive advantages, analyzing customer expectations, and developing and implementing focused and aligned strategic deployment plans. Formerly he served as the chief business strategy officer at Network Health, a comprehensive Medicaid health plan based in Cambridge, Mass.; and was COO of the U.S. Family Health Plan at Martin's Point Health Care in Portland, Maine.