Dr. Blumenthal: I think you've correctly captured my view of the role of health information technology.
There are three essential components for achieving the president's goal and the administration's goal and, I think, the public's goal for a higher-performing health system. The first is better information on what works and what doesn't in the daily practice of medicine.
The second is the ability to apply that knowledge rapidly to practice. And it's in that setting that I think information technology becomes a vital tool. It enables practitioners to access in real-time and have the benefit of … the latest information that is approved by their peers and recognized by their peers as valid and useful for patient care. And it helps overcome the human factors that limit the ability of clinicians to do their best at all times and in all places. Of course, it provides better information about individual patients to factor into decision making as well.
The third element is changes in the financing and organization of care that make it more valuable and more rewarding for physicians and easier for physicians to take cost and quality into account when they make their decisions.
Health information technology is the major part of the second [component], but can't function optimally unless all three are in place. So we are vitally dependent for the savings and the quality improvement that could come out of HIT, we are vitally dependent on health care reform more generally.
If physicians are going to realize savings in their practice and gain the benefit of those savings, there will have to be some change in the way that we pay for care and some change in the way that we recognize excellence in medicine so that physicians, as well as their patients, feel very directly and personally the benefits of making the health care system a better health care system.
SAN: The Recovery Act provides for incentives for HIT adoption starting in 2011, but there are many areas where there are still not uniform standards. Can the industry keep up with this aggressive timetable, and what is the government doing to accelerate that process?
Dr. Blumenthal: Frankly, I think we have most of what we need in the way of standards to permit physicians to get to meaningful use as it is likely to be defined by 2011. I also think that the industry can reconfigure their software in time to make it possible for physicians to meet those standards. I'm not very concerned about that. What I'm mostly concerned about is thatin recognizing those standards and in certifying the software and hardware that we need to certifywe also make certain that we are laying the groundwork for a dramatically improved set of technologies as we go forward. We are looking very hard at how we [can ensure] that when we certify a system and we set a set of standards, we are leaving room for innovation and improvement.
