What's the ROI on that?

I teach IHE profile developers to have a one page attention grabbing slide that shows some numbers that provides the value behind a profile proposal.  It's the "Money Slide", the one that gets people to understand the value proposition.  And it's backed up with someone else's assessment of the value or cost of a problem.

Recently the S&I Framework initiative started a program to improve interoperability between EHR systems and Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs.  Now, this, like just about every other S&I Framework Initiative seems like a good idea. But there's some missing data here, and I'd love to see it.  This is the kind of thing that we should be assessing when we invest in a project.

First of all, let's look at the Charter, where it claims: "Prescription drug misuse and overdose is one of the fastest growing health epidemics in the United States."[1].  The footnote is mine, because the charter didn't include this link to the CDC Report (but perhaps should have).  The next statement: "One of the most promising clinical tools to address prescription drug abuse are prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs)" [2],[3] (again my footnotes).  I cannot judge based on the Charter any realistic evaluation of the utility of these programs are, because I don't know how much they cost [4] (see page 7 for estimates), nor how much they save. [5] (see page 4)

Come on guys, this was a five minute post.  You can do better than this.  Show me why an initiative is valuable without making me go Google it myself.  It would boost your credibility when you announce new initiatives.

Try these Google Searches:

• PDMP Effectiveness
• PDMP ROI
• PDMP Cost

Just that little bit might go a long way towards boosting the perceived value of what you are trying to achieve. If you could take it to the next level, and show the current integration and workflow costs that you are trying to eliminate, that would also help.