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Health care about to go electronic
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| Sholeh Patrick |
By 2014, the federal government says, health care will be fully integrated into the information age.
On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced a 10-year plan to build a new health information infrastructure, including patient e-mail access to their own records.
"Electronic health information will provide a quantum leap in patient power, doctor power, and effective health care. We can't wait any longer," Thompson said in a press release.
Called EHR (electronic health record) systems, the idea is to provide instant access to always-current patient records via the Internet. The EHS system would be networked nationwide so doctors could access patient histories without waiting for paper requests, copies and mailings. Electronic prescriptions, Internet portals for record access, official certifications for the right equipment and programs to protect accuracy and authority, and more information for critical health-care decisions are among the goals described in the HHS report, "The Decade of Health Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and Information-Rich Health Care."
"President Bush has identified (in an April executive order) health information technology as one of the most important technology areas for America's future," said Dr. David Brailer, newly appointed coordinator for health IT. "This report lays down a foundation for achieving this national priority and moves us from a period of discussion into a period of rapid action."
That action may be rapid by government standards, but will likely take all of the 10 years projected because it requires cooperation among private health-care industries, physicians, government and consumers.
It will take expense, too, as hospitals and doctors nationwide will all need the necessary equipment. Some already have it; 13 percent of hospitals and providers have EHR systems, but without the rest of the country caught up, they can't work as efficiently as designed. To speed that along, Thompson announced industry incentives including:
• regional grants and contracts;
• low-rate loans for EHR adoption;
• updating federal rules on physician self-referral that may unintentionally restrict investment and networks;
• using Medicare reimbursement;
• testing "paying for performance" concepts in Medicare -- linking payments to quality of care, instead of volume of services.
Thompson said to accomplish the goal a "leadership panel" will assess the cost-benefit ratios and deliver the results to the president this fall. Next, HHS will establish product standards to ensure uniformly functional and reliable EHR systems via government certification -- especially important to
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smaller medical practices that need to be sure of what they're buying.
Thompson also announced available contracts of $2.3 million to set up regional health information centers and other "information exchanges" described in the report. On the patient end, Medicare will set e-prescription standards and create a beneficiary portal for customer access to Medicare records on the Internet. Early tests of the portal are scheduled for Indiana this year.
The full report is available at www.hhs.gov or by calling the Department of Health and Human Services toll free, (877) 696-6775.
Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network. E-mail her at sholehjo@hotmail.com.
