The Senate Finance Committee held its fourth in a series of hearings Thursday to prepare for Congressional action on health reform.
The latest hearing examined how health information technology could be used to improve healthcare delivery and, in some cases, reduce healthcare spending. The meeting explored what causes geographic variation in healthcare spending and looked at two potential solutions, comparative effectiveness research and health IT, which could help facilitate this type of research.
Dr. Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow with Project Hope, said the establishment of a center for comparative clinical effectiveness could develop and facilitate the information needed to address issues like variation in healthcare spending.
Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) have announced plans to introduce legislation later this year to create such an institute.
Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag said, "The bottom line is that research does indicate that, in certain settings, health IT appears to facilitate reductions in health spending if other steps in the broader healthcare system are also taken to alter incentives to promote savings. By itself, however, the adoption of more health IT is generally not sufficient to produce significant cost savings."
Baucus acknowledged that experts disagree about the benefits of health IT but said it's likely to be a key component of healthcare reform.
"We need to know how quickly we'll be able to reap its benefits," he said. "One of the key drivers of health cost growth is new technology. ... The problem is that we don't know enough about whether the newest and most-expensive interventions actually work better. And we know even less about whether they improve patient care or outcomes."
RAND Principal Researcher Richard Hillestad and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Chairman and CEO George Halvorson also participated in Thursday's hearing. Halvorson detailed how a comprehensive IT system has helped Kaiser provide better, more effective care and encouraged the senators to implement a similar system nationally.
Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said in his opening statement, "While it is clear that electronic patient records will improve efficiency of healthcare delivery, the economics have not proven attractive to doctors. They say that systems are expensive to install, and their practices suffer while they get used to having the electronic systems. Savings that result from increased efficiencies accrue to insurers and other payers, not doctors. So we need to think about how to make adoption of electronic records more attractive to those who will use them."
What do you think about Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag's testimony? Is it true that more healthcare IT by itself is not sufficient to produce significant cost savings? E-mail Associate Editor Molly Merrill at molly.merrill@medtechpublishing.com.