Medical Device Link.

Originally Published MX November/December 2004

BUSINESS NEWS

Competing priorities always make matters difficult for government policymakers, but implementation of healthcare information technologies (IT) is getting a lot of support these days.

Newt Gingrich

One such supporter is former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, who has found a new role in healthcare activism as founder of the Center for Health Transformation (Washington, DC). Speaking at a recent press briefing hosted by Siemens Medical Solutions (Malvern, PA) in New York City, Gingrich lamented the "remarkable lag" in efforts to implement IT systems in the nation's healthcare system.

"There's a huge gap between what's possible and what is currently happening," said Gingrich.

Gingrich emphasized the need to create a health IT system that would be nationwide in scope. "We need to develop a health-management system rather than an acute-care system," said Gingrich. "Patients have the right to access available options in real time, from doctors to pharmacies to hospitals. Once the public sees the benefits of these innovative systems, they'll be willing to pay the cost of implementing IT."

Back in the world of competing priorities, however, the question of how to pay for the implementation of such advanced systems is an ongoing concern. At the briefing, Siemens released the results of a survey of healthcare opinion leaders on the costs and contributions of technology in healthcare. Among the experts surveyed, 60% agreed with the statement that new technology and equipment can help reduce the costs of healthcare.

When asked who should be responsible for paying the bill for IT improvements in healthcare, however, respondents to the Siemens survey were less definite. With multiple responses permitted, respondents said the responsibility should fall to the healthcare industry, including payers (57%), government (51%), patients (33%), doctors (19%), manufacturers (19%), a combination of all (7%), other groups (6%), and the healthcare facility or organization that uses the technology (2%). With such a wide range of notions about who ought to pay the bill, the task of implementing such IT systems could be headed toward a series of insurmountable obstacles.

To overcome such obstacles, Gingrich proposed that government should provide an initial investment toward implementing information technologies. "If the government is serious about creating this national health IT infrastructure, it needs to get serious about funding it," he said. "As an initial goal, 1% of federal healthcare spending should be invested in health IT."

But Gingrich said that he would be opposed to giving federal grants to institutions, because such handouts rarely require recipients to demonstrate the functionality of an end product. Instead, he said, the government should establish a guaranteed loan program to support healthcare institutions that implement IT systems. Such a program will force healthcare centers to show proven results.

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