Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. More is spent on health care in the United States on a per capita basis than in any other nation in the world. A study of international health care spending levels published in the health policy journal Health Affairs in the year 2000, found that while the U.S. spends more on health care than other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the use of health care services in the U.S. is below the OECD median by most measures. The authors of the study conclude that the prices paid for health care services are much higher in the U.S. In 1996, 5% of the population accounted for more than half of all costs.

Active debate over health care reform in the United States concerns questions of a right to health care, access, fairness, efficiency, cost, and quality. The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). The WHO study has been criticized in a study published in Health Affairs for its methodology and lack of correlation with user satisfaction ratings. A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries. However, the U.S. is a leader in medical innovation, with three times higher per-capita spending than Europe. The U.S. also has higher survival rates than most other countries for certain conditions, such as some less common cancers, but has a higher infant mortality rate than all other developed countries.

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage"(i.e. some kind of insurance) -Source Wikipedia

LAZAR strongly believes that the way to reform our crippling Healthcare industry is through IT Reform and therefore implementing better IT Solutions that provide real time data to the hospitals, doctors and nurses. There should be 1 system that is responsible for storing patient records, able to do inventory planning for surgery supplies, provide diagnostics in real time at the fingertips of the caregivers. In order to do that, decision makers need to change the way they think and understand how IT for Healthcare should and could work and only then understand that it is possible to have all those multitudes of systems replaced by ONE SOLUTION.

SAP for Healthcare is the only solution in today’s market that can do this and more.

In healthcare organizations today, integrated, individualized information can allow healthcare professionals and organizations to collaborate on behalf of the patient to provide the best care. Patients can also use this information to proactively manage their own care—but this all requires a unified view of relevant information.

LAZAR and its Business Partners offer health portal and health information exchange solutions that can enable clinicians and patients to more securely view integrated information—from medical records and lab results to personal health information and appointment scheduling.

Providing efficient access to patient health and administrative data, across care settings, can enable more meaningful collaboration among clinicians and improve the quality of interaction between patient and physician. An integrated view of information can also help provider organizations engage their communities, using personalized information to help individuals manage chronic disease and stay healthy.

Taking into account the intense scrutiny - especially concerning cost effectiveness - healthcare organizations (e.g. hospitals) are faced with, it is important to ensure that the processes from patient registration to invoicing are seamless and transparent but even more importantly, accurate.