During my career as a heart surgeon, I saw too many patients who were trapped in a paper-based healthcare system that led to duplicative tests and tragic and avoidable medical errors. Despite the advancement of innovative health information technology, America’s health care system remains trapped in the 20th century.

The need for Health IT and health information exchange became even more apparent during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when I saw displaced patients present themselves in makeshift clinics with little or no medical history to guide their health providers.  To date, many physicians remain reluctant to convert their offices to electronic health records because many are unwilling or unable to handle the cost.

We must do more to empower health care consumers and providers with better information about health care costs and quality, and protect patients’ control over their personally identifiable information and individual treatment decisions.

I believe both political parties clearly understand that we need to modernize our health care system to give patients better value for their health care dollars.  For these reasons, I introduced the Patient-Controlled HealthIT Act, H.R. 6345.

The Patient-Controlled HealthIT Act would:

·         Ø      Give patients the ability to receive their personal medical information in electronic form from providers who maintain electronic records;

·         Ø      Create financial incentives for health information exchanges to provide electronic clinical data to patients’ personal health records;

·         Ø      Provide incentives for physicians to utilize that data in the course of treating their patient;

·         Ø      Help demonstrate how best to accomplish these goals, including examining the impact both financial incentives and availability of electronic data have on patients’ health outcomes.

Congress can improve our healthcare system, making it more affordable and keeping the doctor-patient relationship at the heart of any changes, and HealthIT is an important start.  Patient access to their health electronic records is a critical component of a safe, secure and reliable HealthIT program.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Politics .