Panel Aims for Digital Health Files

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June 7, 2005 latimes.com Business

Panel Aims for Digital Health Files

A U.S.-appointed group will explore ways to make patient records

available on a national electronic system.

By Girion, Times Staff Writer

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt announced Monday

that he would head a new panel that would push for a national system

to exchange medical records electronically.

Comparing the importance of this mission to the linking of the

nation's railroads, Leavitt said standardizing, digitizing and

connecting all U.S. health records was so crucial to the economy and

to patient safety that it warranted the leadership of the federal

government.

" The use of electronic health records and other information

technology will transform our healthcare system by reducing medical

errors, minimizing paperwork hassles, lowering costs and improving

quality of care, " Leavitt said, speaking to a health information

technology conference in New York. " We will bring together the public

and private sectors to transform healthcare as we know it. "

The committee also will recommend priorities for health information

technology goals that will benefit consumers, such as improving drug

safety and bio-terrorism surveillance.

Leavitt said he would appoint as many as 17 members from government

and private enterprise to a panel dubbed the American Health

Information Community. It will make recommendations to the Health and

Human Services Department on how to make health records uniform,

digital and interoperable while protecting the confidentiality of

patient records.

Privacy " is a particularly poignant concern when one is dealing with

a health record, " Leavitt said later in a phone interview. " Records

have to be private. They have to be secure or people won't use this. "

Patients would benefit from a system that reduces their need to

shuttle lab results from one hospital to another or fill out the same

kind of paperwork for each doctor they see, he said.

" The goal is to have the medical clipboard become a thing of the

past, " he said.

HHS, through the Medicare and Medicaid programs, is the largest

single buyer of medical services in the nation. This allows the

federal agency to drive change in the way hospitals, physicians and

private insurers do business.

" Once the market has structure, providers, medical professionals and

vendors will innovate, create efficiencies and improve care, " Leavitt

said. Already about 200 companies offer electronic medical records

systems, though they are not yet designed to exchange data

efficiently.

The effort is aimed at advancing President Bush's call for most

Americans to have electronic health records within a decade.

Employers also are pushing for technological improvements in

healthcare information systems in an effort to save money by, for

instance, reducing the need for duplicate medical tests because

results have been lost or are inaccessible.

Leavitt also called the mission a moral one, saying that improved

records-keeping and access would promote patient safety. The

Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit research organization affiliated

with the National Academy of Sciences, has estimated that medical

errors kill as many as 98,000 patients in U.S. hospitals each year.