Rep. Murphy Kicks Off National Health IT Week

Washington, Tuesday, June 10, 2008 -

Congressman Tim Murphy and Congressman Patrick Kennedy, Co-Chairs of the 21st Century Healthcare Caucus, joined with dozens of national health information organizations to kick off National Health IT Week in Congress.

National Health IT Week is the leading forum for developing common ground to advance the adoption of health information technologies to transform healthcare in the United States.  Public and private sector organizations with diverse perspectives on health and care gathered in the nation’s capitol to meet with legislators to work together with the goal of improving healthcare efficiency, quality, cost-effectiveness and patient safety through health IT. 

Health information technology has the potential to save more than $81 billion annually in health care costs.  From drastically reducing medical errors to streamlining administration, health IT is the key to transforming our healthcare system.  However, healthcare has been slow to transition into the information age due to the initial investment cost, a lack of uniform standards allowing information to be shared, and other systemic challenges.

“Health IT brings the 18th century medical paper file system into 21st century medical care,” said Dr. Tim Murphy. “Under the current paper system, when a person is traveling or in the case of emergency, doctors may not have immediate access to a patient’s paper medical records.  Patients see multiple doctors and their paper records are often scattered between different offices and their files are incomplete.  As a result, even the best doctors may not know all the medications a patient is on or all the tests they’ve had conducted.  This leads to costly repetitive tests and dangerous drug interactions.

“Electronic medical records bring this tower of babble to an end.  In a matter of seconds, a patient’s complete medical record can be securely and confidentially transmitted to a doctor.  They help to avoid medical crisis and save lives.”

Murphy and Kennedy introduced H. Con. Res. 367 to recognize that thousands of lives can be saved as a result of improved patient safety and fewer medical errors with the development of health information technology.