The Nashville Tech Story (8/6/2009)
The Nashville Technology Council hosted our “Naked Hospital” event this morning. The event revolved around health care reform and transparency. Our second speaker was U.S. Congressman Marsha Blackburn who provided the audience with a legislative update on the health care reform issue.
Congressman Blackburn is concerned by the state of confusion revolving around patients. She fully believe’s that it’s frustrating to both employers and patients because the system is currently not as transparent as it should be. Many individuals have issues with simply finding where to go when they don’t understand the paperwork they recieve from their physician, hospital or insurance provider.
While transparency is extremely important, one of the components that cannot be overlooked and must also be transparent is the educational aspect. Patients need to be able to understand their insurance policies, bills being sent to them by their doctor ’s, and what the information means that hospital’s are giving them. With education will come the discussion to start making patients liable.
Everyone agrees that costs are too high, access is very limited and tort reform needs to take place. Currently, some of the conversation taking place in government revolves around making individuals more responsible, which includes something as simple as following a doctor’s orders and taking prescription drugs as they are prescribed.
Health IT is also a very important component that needs to be addressed. The benefits that Health IT can provide can provide an enormous source of savings and efficiency. One example of this is taking advantage of Electronic Medical Records (EMR). Congressman Blackburn is a big believer that every patient should own their medical record, which would create a huge cost savings for the health care industry. The best example of this was after Katrina, which would have saved cost had individuals had access to an EMR.
“Our hope is that going back you will see a beginning to whittle down and find the areas of agreement to yield efficiencies and savings,” said Congressman Blackburn. ”We want to be able to move something to the President’s desk by the end of the year that will deal with IT issues and create some reform.”
If you want to learn more about these issues, visit Congressman Blackburn’s website at www.Blackburn.house.gov
