Politicians Push For IT In Health Care

Eventually, Frist said, health care records would be available in the same way that an individual can go to an ATM anywhere in the world and access a bank account, a comparison also made by other speakers at the forum. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich argued that lawmakers should take action to enact reforms rather than letting themselves get bogged down in debate. Consumers, he said, have demonstrated their desire for secure and convenient access to their financial data via ATMs, he said, and would likely feel the same way regarding the medical records.

"It would be stunning if you did it on a volume basis; how many people would value the convenience and security rather than an obscure debate about privacy," he said.

Should an information technology standard be established, the federal government also will work to ensure that the various elements of the health care system take advantage of it, mainly by offering incentives to those companies, hospitals and health care providers that demonstrate an increase in their efficiency while reducing costs. Frist spoke of "tying some reimbursement or bonus to the use of information technology in some way."

Earlier in the forum, Dr. Mark McClellan, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said the Bush administration also supported the use of electronic standards, which he said has been a consistent policy for the White House.

"The administration already has made great progress in electronic standards in other areas, and we support it in health care," he said. McClellan added that the administration was taking a similar "pay for performance" position for the Medicaid and Medicare systems. The "turning point" for reforming those programs "will occur when we see which plans can deliver effective care for seniors while lowering their costs," he said. "The plans that succeed in this challenge are going to be the future of health care."

The financial incentives of increased reimbursement, McClellan said, will move health care providers who in the past have been unwilling to make the investment in improving their efficiency. "There just wasnt a business case for doing it," under the traditional Medicare system, he said.

Frist says that moving to a system of electronic records could reduce the costs to the health care system by as much as 20% according to some estimates

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, March 10, 2005. Copyright 2005 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.