U.S. Congressman Tim Murphy : 18th District Of Pennsylvania

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Healthcare

Efforts to reduce health care costs have focused on Health and Medical Savings Accounts, medical liability reform and Association Health Plans. While these steps are all vital and must not be abandoned, there are other options we must look at if we want to make health care more affordable and accessible.

Congressman Murphy believes there is currently a too limited of a focus when it comes to health care. Instead of always asking “who” will pay for health care services, people should begin to focus on “what” it is they are paying for. Congress continues to fund an antiquated health care system in which patients often end up paying for preventable medical errors that could be avoided with modern technology.

Congress needs to institute fundamental changes to bring our nation’s health care delivery system into the 21st Century.

We live in the Information Age, but health care, one of the most information intensive fields, remains mired in a pen-and-paper past. We can buy plane tickets online, make financial transactions across oceans, and send family pictures via email; yet the health care industry remains dangerously disconnected.

Such an inefficient health care information system holds serious consequences for all of us.

Patients must still carry their paper records and scribbled-down prescriptions from one provider to another where any information that slips from their folder is lost forever. This lack of comprehensive information technology robs doctors and nurses of critical information; results in medical errors, misdiagnosis and needless test duplications; increases costs; and reduces the overall quality of health care.

Doctors and nurses may have only moments to examine voluminous paper medical records -- unable to review records thoroughly, they risk missing critical patient information.

A wealth of information is available highlighting the need to modernize America’s health care systems sooner rather than later:

• The Institute of Medicine reports that over 7,000 people die every year just from medication errors alone with anywhere between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths attributed to medical errors in hospitals.

• A study by the RAND Corporation estimates that only 55 percent of our nation’s patients are receiving the recommended care they need.

• A recent study by the state of Pennsylvania found that 10 percent of hospitalizations of Pennsylvanians under the age of 65 were unnecessary and avoidable had the patients been offered early intervention or high quality outpatient care.

The absence of information technology in health care significantly contributes to inappropriate or inadequate treatment. These mistakes cost money and they cost lives. According to the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council, unnecessary hospitalizations cost $2.8 billion in unnecessary treatment in Pennsylvania alone.

And, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports that $100 billion a year is linked to medical errors.

Congress must begin to look at health care costs in a new way, focusing on overall health and not simply disease; emphasizing the need to move toward a model of integrated care by providing ways for a patient’s physicians to coordinate their care; and promoting the modernization of our nation’s health care system.

The situation people face every month when trying to pay for their health insurance requires this Congress to bring the information technology that touches every other aspect of our lives to the one area that may mean the most. Just as information technology has changed the face of our nation’s banking, manufacturing, retail and virtually every other sector of society; it must now transform and modernize our nation’s health care system.

Congress must promote ideas to bring the transformative power of information technology to every corner of our health care system in an effort to ensure quality, patient safety and efficiency through bipartisan solutions.

Congressman Tim Murphy is a psychologist, and holds two Adjunct Associate Professor positions at the University of Pittsburgh (Pediatrics, and Public Health). He is Co-chair of both the Congressional 21st Century Healthcare Caucus and the Congressional Mental Health Caucus.