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Banking Industry Rules May Guide Use of Electronic Records


 

WASHINGTON — With health savings accounts serving as a point of entry, banks and other financial institutions are rapidly moving into the health care sector, and bankers believe they have much to offer in streamlining health care transactions and bringing greater efficiency to the medical world.

In terms of the digitization of health care financing, we are still in a paper-based era, and many people feel distrust for electronic health care management in the same way they felt distrust for electronic banking when it was introduced.

But bankers engaged in health care believe we're on the cusp of rapid change. Over the next decade, broader adoption of health savings accounts (HSAs) coupled with interoperable personal health records systems on the patient side, and wider use of electronic medical records on the physician side, will bring health care in line with nearly all other industries in terms of maximal use of electronic information exchange.

James S. Gandolfo, senior vice president of PFPC, a division of PNC Financial Services, and chairman of the American Bankers' Association's HSA Council, told World Health Care Congress attendees that banks' involvement in health care could be profoundly transformational.

For one, banks can provide interoperable and widely accepted technology platforms, something the health care sector has yet to develop. Banks are also very tightly regulated and standardized; they have exhaustive experience conducting rapid and high-volume data exchange in a secure environment; they provide multiple but interrelated services for millions of people. Banking technology has given ordinary people far greater control over their financial lives.

“Banks provide established rules for information exchange, and worldwide standardization,” said Mr. Gandolfo.

PNC Financial Services, which has assets of roughly $90.7 billion and $58.7 billion in total deposits, is the eighth largest treasury management group in the country. It is moving steadily into health care, positioning itself as a health care financial clearinghouse currently serving 1,200 corporate clients, including Medicare and Medicaid programs, Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans, commercial insurance carriers, and pharmacy benefits managers.

As an industry, health care has lagged far behind other industries in terms of information technology investments. Mr. Gandolfo estimated that about $3,000/worker per year is spent on technology advances in the health care sector, while about $7,000/worker per year is spent by other private sector industries, and about $15,000/worker per year is spent in the banking industry. He said that he strongly believes it is time for the health care sector to embrace the technology developed by the banking world, and he anticipates it won't be long before we routinely see card-based health care transactions, real-time information exchange, and real-time financial transaction settlements.

The health care congress was sponsored by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.

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