Thompson announces 'Decade of
Health Information
Technology'
10-year plan aims to digitize health care in the U.S.
Credit Pacific Service Union By Mike Klein and Kristin V. Johnson •
07/21/04
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Credit First Service Union Thompson at a Senate appearance earlier this year. Credit: U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services.MADISONU.S. Health and
Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced Wednesday the
first part of the government's plan to establish a national health
information infrastructure in 10 years and bring electronic health
records to every patient. HHS also released a report, prepared by
National Health IT Coordinator Dr. David Brailer, which outlines
the "Decade of Health Information Technology," a joint
public-private initiative with four major overall goals and several
specific actions.
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Card Credit Mobile Service "America needs to move much faster to adopt information
technology in our health care system," Thompson said as he released
the action report ordered by President Bush. "Electronic health
information will provide a quantum leap in patient power, doctor
power and effective health care. We can't wait any longer."
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Card Credit Discover Service The creation of electronic health records and a network to
connect them is at the heart of the plan. Several efforts,
including the appointment of a special Leadership Panel, are
underway.
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Credit Public Service Union "The federal government will provide a vision and a strategic
direction for a national interoperable health care system, but will
rely on a competitive technology industry, privately operated
support services and shared investments," Thompson said.
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The four stated goals of Thompson's report, "The Decade of Health
Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and
Information-Rich Health Care."
Center Credit Service Union Goal 1 "Inform Clinical Practice:" Bringing information tools to
the point of care, especially by investing in EHR systems in
physician offices and hospitals.
Card Credit Service Wireless Goal 2 "Interconnect Clinicians:" Building an interoperable
health information infrastructure, so that records follow the
patient and clinicians have access to critical health care
information when treatment decisions are being made.
Credit Security Service Union Goal 3 "Personalize Care:" Using health information technology
to give consumers more access and involvement in health
decisions.
Credit Report Service Goal 4 "Improve Population Health:" Expanding capacity for
public health monitoring, quality of care measurement, and bringing
research advances more quickly into medical practice.
Addressing more than 1,000 attendees at a Washington conference
organized by HHS on the National Healthcare Information Initiative,
Thompson said the panel will assess the cost and benefits of health
information technology and report to him. In addition, $50 million
in seed funding for community information exchanges will be
provided to five states this fall, with plans doubling the
investment in 2005.
Blogspot Com Christian Dr. Barry Chaiken, chief medical officer for ABQAURP, a patient
safety organization, said in reaction to the announcement: "The
fostering of interoperability standards, if successful, will
finally allow the easy and accurate transfer of medical information
among facilities. This reduces the chance of caregivers using
incomplete or inaccurate information while caring for patients. It
appears that the federal government recognizes its responsibility
to foster innovation and the acceptance of information technology
to make care safer and more efficient. Although the acceptance of
change will not be easy, I believe our health care professionals
will embrace the use of information technology to improve the
outcomes of their patients."
Decade of Health Information Technology Report
Brailer's report identifies potential policy options for providing
incentives for EHR adoption. The health sector has been slow to
invest in EHRs, with only 13 percent of hospitals reporting they
had the systems in 2002, and 14 to 28 percent of physicians'
practices. Some incentive options to be reviewed include:
- regional grants and contracts to stimulate EHRs and community
information exchange systems;
improving availability of low-rate loans for EHR adoption;
- updating federal rules on physician self-referral that may
unintentionally restrict investment and networks;
- using Medicare reimbursement to reward use of EHRs;
- using demonstration projects to test new concepts in Medicare
of "paying for performance" linking payments to quality of care
rather than volume of services only.
"This approach drives industry-wide change by focusing on the
clinician and the consumer," Brailer said. "Our goal is to bring
about improvement of health care from inside out. This
transformation will require the collaborative efforts and
leadership of clinicians, consumers, hospitals, purchasers, payers,
technology companies and informatics thought leaders to make this
groundwork for change a reality."
Christian Counseling Credit Peter B. Strombom, vice president and chief information officer
for Meriter Health Services in Madison, said, "America has the
technology, the people and skills to make this a reality. The most
significant obstacles today are competitive and political not the
technology. The question that remains is the funding of this
initiative. Many of the larger systems in the country, including
Meriter Hospital, UW Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital, are already
funding such initiatives from their own revenues ... but it is very
costly. A set of defined standards must be developed to make the
national network possible. This will also require a great deal of
energy and funding. There are also many smaller organizations that
cannot afford the investment. Indeed, the move toward an EHR is
stretching the resources of all organizations."
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The eHealth Initiative and the Health Resources & Services
Administration announced today $2 million in grants through a
"Connecting Communities for Better Health" program to fund local
projects in electronic health information exchange that support
quality, safety and efficiency goals. The nine awardees, selected
from among 134 multi-stakeholder applicants, are:
Credit Monitoring Service Central Indiana Healthcare Collaboration in Indianapolis
($425,000)
Connecting Colorado in Denver ($300,000)
MA-SHARE MedsInfo e-Prescribing Initiative in Waltham, Mass.
($400,000)
MD/DC Collaborative for Healthcare Information Technology in the
Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area ($100,000)
Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange in Santa Barbara, Calif.
($400,000)
Taconic Health Information Network and Community in Fishkill, N.Y.
($100,000)
Tri-Cities TN-VA Care Data Exchange in Kingsport, Tenn.
($100,000)
Whatcom County e-Prescribing Project in Bellingham, Wash.
($100,000)
National Institute for Medical Informatics-Midwest in Milwaukee,
Wis. ($100,000)
Credit Division Service The report also identified three broad phases of implementation:
developing the market institutions that are needed for a healthy
market to exist in health information technology; encouraging
investment both at the clinical level and in a new national network
and achieving high quality and performance accountability.
Card Credit Online Service Dr. Raymond J. Zastrow, a family physician with Advanced
Healthcare in Mequon, reacted to these announcements by stating,
"The federal push to promote informatic interoperability gives me
hope that we're about to move beyond the 'cottage industry' phase
of the EMR/EHR market and jump to the next level of maturity. It's
hard to predict precisely how the complex interplay of technology
'driver' development, standards development, public/private sector
development, and 'critical mass' of adoption will ultimately play
out as the NHII, but it's exciting to think that a new
infrastructure to support a better health care product lies just
beyond a 10-year horizon.
Consumer Counseling Credit Inc "10 years may seem like a long time, but the undertaking is so
very complex. The effort to produce the NHII has been compared to
that of the Apollo program. However, today's announcement doesn't
tell us how we'll know when we've arrived. There will be no defined
end-point akin to a Neil Armstrong stroll on lunar
soil, so how will we know that
we've reached the EMR/EHR destination? I suspect that we'll know
we've arrived when NHII is as ubiquitous and as
taken-for-granted as the ATM
banking network we now rely on
so completely."
Health technology and government programs
Technology is also being infused into the Medicare program, as
Thompson announced plans to allow Medicare users to access their
information online. The Internet portal is expected to accelerate
regulations for prescribing drugs online.
Card Credit Fleet Service The president's April executive order also directed the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense
(DoD) and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to report on how
they will advance the adoption of health information technology.
Their reports were also released today.
Card Consolidation Credit The VA, collaboratively with DoD, provided joint recommendations
in their report on: lessons learned, the knowledge and technology
transfers to be gained from successful VA/DoD data exchange
initiatives, the adoption of common standards and terminologies to
promote more effective and rapid development of health technologies
and the development of telehealth technologies to improve care in
rural and remote areas.
Credit Free Online Report The OPM report explores a variety of options to leverage its
purchasing power and alliances to advance the adoption of health
information technology.
Credit Federal First Service The "Decade of Health Information Technology" report has been
published and is available online.
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