HHS Launches Decade of Health IT

Washington

In late July, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson released the outline of a 10-year plan to implement the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and to build a network to link health records nationwide. HHS said the new plan would “transform the delivery of health care by building a new health information infrastructure.”

“America needs to move much faster to adopt information technology in our health care system,” Thompson said. “Electronic health information will provide a quantum leap in patient power, doctor power and effective health care. We can’t wait any longer.” Besides improving the quality of care and reducing medical errors, he continued, information technology (IT) “has the potential to produce savings of 10 percent of our total spending on health care.”

Prepared by Dr. David J. Brailer, the new national coordinator for health IT, the initiative lays out the broad steps needed to achieve “always-current, always-available electronic health records for Americans.”

The plan identifies four major goals: (1) informing clinical practice by bringing IT tools to the point of care, especially by investing in EHR systems in physician offices and hospitals; (2) interconnecting clinicians by building an interoperable health information infrastructure so that records follow the patient and clinicians have access to critical health care information; (3) personalizing care by using health IT to improve consumers’ access to and involvement in their own care; and (4) improving population health by expanding the nation’s capacity for public heath monitoring, quality of care measurement and bringing research advances more quickly into medical practice.

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