Health Reform Hinges on IT

Health IT is the primary cure to what ails the country's health-care system, the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center concludes in a report released Thursday.

The power of health IT to improve health care lies in its ability to dramatically increase information-sharing among a network of health-care providers, according to the executive summary of the report, "The Role of Health IT in Supporting Health Care Transformation: Building a Strong Foundation for America's Health Care System."

Information sharing is critical to ensuring that health reform efforts succeed, says the report. Moreover, greater patient access to health information is needed to drive down health-care costs. New state insurance exchanges also rely on health IT to streamline patient enrollment, determine eligibility and help consumers decide among insurance coverage options, the report says.

"This bipartisan consensus embraces the strong belief that health IT is a -- if not the -- most important infrastructure component to address the primary challenges confronting the American health care system: rising costs, eroding coverage, and inconsistent quality," concludes the executive summary. "Coaxing the system into the information age will be critical to making long overdue progress on all of these fronts," the report says.

At the same time, several things need to happen for health IT to reach its potential for improving health care, says the report's author, Janet Marchibroda, chair of the center's Health Information Technology Initiative. Chief among them:

• Improving public- and private-sector collaboration for workforce training; helping small and rural practices and hospitals implement electronic health records; and developing state health information exchanges.
• Aligning health IT system capabilities more closely with health reform efforts.
• Engaging the public more effectively in using emerging health IT technologies geared toward consumers.

The task force will release recommendations later this year for "aligning current health IT efforts to best utilize scarce public and private resources in support of new care delivery models that will improve the quality of care for all Americans," the center says in a news release.