Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee leaders urged Congress to consider and pass a bill to expand and standardize information technology (IT) in the health care arena. “We can save thousands of lives and conserve billions of dollars for health care…and we can do it this year,” Committee Chairman Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) said at an April 2, 2008, forum hosted by the Business Roundtable, a Washington D.C.-based association of chief executive officers of U.S. companies.
Kennedy said he hopes the next administration will be able to implement such legislation and end the current stalemate. “The country requires it,” he said. He noted that the RAND Corporation has found that widespread use of health IT could produce annual savings in efficiency and improved health outcomes of $165 billion.
Ranking member Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) added that increased use of health IT would help reduce medical errors and duplicative tests, saving billions of dollars and improving health care. “Moving from a paper-based health care system to secure electronic medical records will save lives and reduce skyrocketing health care costs,” he said, adding that “[t]he health care and business communities…are clamoring for Congress to take action and establish uniform health IT standards.”
The Wired for Health Care Quality Act (S. 1693) was introduced last June in the Senate. A similar bill–the Promoting Health Information Technology Act (H.R. 3800)–was introduced in the House in October. Both bills would foster implementation of a nationwide interoperable health information network, according to a Business Roundtable release.
“For nearly all businesses, with the notable exception of health care, electronic communication has already moved into second- and third-generation iterations. Yet, today 90 percent of health care records are kept on paper,” Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications and Chairman of the Business Roundtable’s Health and Retirement Task Force noted. “Our health care is stuck in time and lacks even the simplest IT foundation,” he said in the release.
CCH Washington Bureau, April 4, 2008.
Visit our News Library to read more news stories.