Wednesday, June 3, 2009

White House Notes Health IT Ups, Downs

Widespread adoption of health information technology as part of the larger U.S. healthcare reform movement holds great promise but also potential perils, according to a Tuesday report by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "Systematic examinations of the merits of different treatments and dissemination of the results of those examinations to patients and providers is one mechanism for promoting high-value care," the report said, noting health IT may play a key role in increasing the rate at which new information spreads and is incorporated into practice behavior. At the same time, providers have strong financial incentives to compete on the basis of technology adoption rather than price, which could lead to excesses of IT equipment and services (for example, MRI machines and minimally invasive vascular diagnostic and procedure suites). That could amount to higher rates of utilization and costs, the report stated.

In most fields, technological progress is generally cost-reducing as individuals discover more effective ways of accomplishing things that were already being done, the paper stated. In medicine, however, technological progress in recent decades has been almost exclusively cost-increasing, without generating a commensurate increase in value. Undoubtedly, provider incentives, which largely reward finding an expensive way of treating a previously untreated condition rather than finding a less costly alternative to an existing treatment, contribute to this trend, the council stated. Nevertheless, the council estimated potential savings generated by overall healthcare reform could amount to as much as $1.7 trillion over 10 years. Read the report here.

Shameless plug: I'll be moderating a Wednesday panel of health IT experts at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference at George Washington University. Speakers include: Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology; Patient Privacy Rights Executive Director Ashley Katz; Joel Slackman, managing director for the Office of Policy and Representation at BlueCross BlueShield; e-MDs CEO Michael Stearns; and Microsoft Director of Consumer Affairs Frank Torres.