Bush Calls for Electronic Medical Records for Every American

Minneapolis

During an April 26 speech promoting innovation, President Bush set a goal that in 10 years every American should have an electronic medical record. The goal follows a call for computerization of health care records in his Jan. 20 State of the Union address.

In a speech at the American Association of Community Colleges’ annual convention in Minneapolis, the president also announced the creation of a sub-Cabinet-level position for a “national health information technology coordinator” who will report directly to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The new coordinator will foster partnerships between the public and private sectors to speed information technology (IT) into the health care market.

The announcement comes after the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) released a draft report recommending how the administration should integrate IT into health care.

Such action “can result in substantial economic and social benefits, including cost savings, error reduction and an improvement in the quality of care received by patients in the U.S. health care system,” the report said. Titled Health Care Delivery and Information Technology: Draft Recommendations, the final report is expected to be released this month.

The report includes four primary recommendations: 1) electronic health records for every person that maximize the amount of information available to health care providers; 2) computer-assisted decision support to increase conformance with evidence-based medicine; 3) electronic order-entry for outpatient care and within hospital environments; and 4) an interoperable electronic information interchange that includes both highly specific standards for the capture of new data and tools for capturing non-standards-compliant electronic information from legacy systems.

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