Gingrich: Electronic health records needed in U.S.

IDG News Service - U.S. hospitals, doctors, insurance companies and the government are endangering lives by moving too slowly in adopting electronic health records, Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, said today.
Gingrich, now running a health care advocacy group called the Center for Health Transformation, challenged attendees of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange's (WEDI) annual convention in Baltimore to push for higher standards in health care and promote electronic health records. Electronic health records are the first step toward what Gingrich called a "21st century intelligent health system" that would make an electronic health record an instant diagnostic tool available to all U.S. residents.
WEDI is a trade group that advocates improved health care through electronic commerce, and Gingrich, along with Tommy Thompson, former U.S. secretary of health and human services, received the organization's annual innovator's award. This month, Republican Gingrich joined with former political rival Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in supporting a congressional bill aimed at jump-starting electronic health record use in the U.S.
Gingrich and Clinton both have been mentioned as possible U.S. presidential candidates in 2008.
Although President George Bush called for the adoption of standards for electronic health records in January 2004, Gingrich said that adoption effort is moving too slowly.
A 21st century intelligent health system, which U.S. residents could voluntarily access, would include DNA tests that alert individuals to health risks, Gingrich said. The system could include a home diagnostic kit, with features such as blood-testing equipment, that a person could administer to themselves and get a near-instant diagnosis or warning to see a doctor, he said.
"We have to have a sense of urgency," Gingrich told WEDI attendees. "Every day we don't get that data to the people who need it, they die."
Internet users can instantly buy airplane tickets online and drivers can pay for gas immediately using a passcard at a gas pump, but the U.S. health care industry still largely relies on paper-based records to track patient treatment, he said.
"This is normal outside of health," he said of electronic transactions. "We're not asking health to be innovative; we're asking health to catch up. We're not taking about the distant future; we're talking about the recent past, integrated into health."
Gingrich, who served on an aviation committee when he was in Congress, compared health care patient treatment standards with aviation safety standards. In the aviation industry, "best practice is the minimum practice," he said, while in health care, an estimated 8,000 U.S. residents die every year from medication errors.