“Health IT Now!” unites patients, practitioners & employers

Source: Technology Digital

Date :6/8/2007 8:45:43 AM

NAM joins two former members of Congress to form Health IT Now! Healthy Patients for Health Technology, a coalition formed to promote the rapid deployment of heath information technology.

“Improving our health care system through technology, whether in the office or the operating room, is something everyone can agree on,” says National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) President John Engler.

“Health care costs are a major headache for manufacturers, small and large,” Engler says, pointing to a 2006 NAM survey of its small and mid-sized members which showed that half of respondents saw an 11 to 20 percent increase in health care costs in 2005. “But the cure isn’t aspirin. It’s technology. This new coalition will be actively pressing Congress to enact legislation to lift the regulatory barriers to implementing Health IT, to provide incentives for adoption of information technology, and direct government attention and resources to the issue.”

The coalition, chaired by former Representative Nancy Johnson and former Senator John Breaux, unites patients, practitioners and employers to push for federal legislation this year to promote a connected health care IT system. The coalition’s initiatives include educating both Congress and the public on the life-saving—and cost-saving—benefits of health IT.

Health IT Now! advocates for federal legislation including:

• Permanence in statute for a federal responsibility to lead a public-private process to establish standards for system interoperability, product certification, and quality measures and an accelerated process for standards improvement;

• Federal financial incentives to practitioners of care to facilitate the adoption of Health IT, and for communities, states, and other entities to plan HIT components and develop Health Information Exchanges;

• Federal focus on consumer empowerment through patient education tools to encourage patient use of electronic health records and provider quality information: and

• Federal leadership of a federal-state process to resolve policy issues, like privacy and professional licensure, to provide a secure and safe care system

Health IT Now! unites patients, practitioners and employers, working together for health IT now to dramatically improve quality of patient care, consumer convenience and patient health while lowering health care costs. To learn more about Health IT Now! visit www.healthitnow.org.