eHI Applauds President Bush’s New Health Information Technology Plan Which Will Lead to Better Healthcare for All Americans
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Phil Duncan |
April 27, 2004 |
Washington, D.C., April 27 — The eHealth Initiative today applauded the announcement of President George W. Bush’s groundbreaking Health Information Technology Plan during the President’s speech at the American Association of Community Colleges Annual Convention in Minneapolis, MN yesterday. Saying “modern technology hasn't caught up with a major aspect of healthcare and we've got to change that” the President set a 10-year goal for a majority of Americans to have electronic health records when and where they are needed that are designed to share information privately and securely among and between healthcare providers when authorized by the patient. To accomplish this goal and to coordinate federal health information technology efforts, the creation of a new, sub-Cabinet level post at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is another major tenet of the President’s Health Information Technology Plan. An announcement of a National Health Information Technology Coordinator who will guide ongoing work on health information standards and work to identify and implement the various steps needed to support and encourage health information technology in the public and private sector healthcare delivery systems, is expected in the coming days.
Coordinated public and private sector efforts to accelerate broader adoption of information technology is a key principle of the President’s technology blueprint. “This is an exciting opportunity for the federal government and the private sector to intensify our cooperative efforts to bring modern tools of information technology into the U.S. healthcare system, so that we can improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare for all Americans,” said Janet M. Marchibroda, Chief Executive Officer of the eHealth Initiative.
Bush’s Health Information Technology Plan also calls for:
- The federal government to accelerate the identification and adoption of voluntary standards necessary for the safe and secure sharing of health information among health providers;
- Increased money for demonstration projects involving modern electronic records systems that test information technology and establish best practices for wider adoption, including a doubling of demonstration project funding to $100 million in the President’s FY-’05 budget; and
- Creating federal incentives and opportunities which encourage healthcare providers to use electronic medical records. Under the Health Information Technology Plan, federal agencies must review their policies and programs and propose modifications and new actions to the President within 90 days.
“eHI applauds the President for his leadership and for proposing these concrete steps that will enable the private and secure mobilization of data to support the needs of patients,” said Marchibroda. ” eHealth Initiative looks forward to working with the new senior post at HHS and other leaders within the Administration to bring together forward-thinking people from all sectors of the healthcare system to jointly develop practical strategies to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare by speeding the adoption of electronic health records and an electronic health information infrastructure.”
About the eHealth Initiative and its Foundation
The eHealth Initiative and the Foundation for eHealth Initiative are independent, non-profit affiliated organizations whose missions are the same: to drive improvement in the quality, safety and efficiency of healthcare through information and information technology.
Both organizations are focused on engaging multiple and diverse stakeholders — including hospitals and other healthcare organizations, clinician groups, employers and purchasers, health plans, healthcare information technology organizations, manufacturers, public health agencies, academic and research institutions, and public sector stakeholders — to define and then implement specific actions that will address the quality, safety and efficiency challenges of our healthcare system through the use of interoperable information technology.
For more information on the eHealth Initiative and the Foundation for eHealth Initiative, go to http://www.ehealthinitiative.org.
