ACTION NEEDED:

Congress should create health information technology policy that protects consumers, reduces costs and improves the quality of health care for Americans.

BACKROUND:

Health insurance is expensive because health care is expensive, and the cost of insurance coverage is impacting our nation’s employers and economic growth. One way to address this issue is to make improvements to health information technology systems. It is estimated that improvements to IT can reduce health care costs up to 20 percent each year by saving time and reducing duplication. As such, NAHU is highly supportive of health IT initiatives as a way to lead to higher-quality care for American consumers by reducing errors and improving patient satisfaction. Advances in health IT will enable true collaboration between doctors and patients as consumers make more informed choices and doctors become more involved in their care. In the long run, improved technology will also provide better information to track public health problems and advance clinical research.

Electronic Health Records

An interoperable system of electronic health information holds many potential benefits

for consumers, including better coordination of health care regardless of patient location,

higher quality and more efficient care, increased system transparency, and patient access

to information about providers that allows them to make better decisions. NAHU supports efforts to make all health records electronic with interoperable technology so that all systems are able to communicate with one another making all individual health records as up-to-date as possible.

Consumer Protection

Health information technology offers tremendous potential to increase privacy and security protections beyond those available with paper medical records. Electronic health records would protect patient privacy by only allowing authorized individuals to access protected health information. The Department of Health and Human Services is working to identify the strategies necessary to ensure that health information is secure and protected in a nationwide health information network. These efforts seek to balance both the importance of protecting information and the goals of sharing important information to improve clinical care and health care quality. NAHU feels that current federal protections of health information under HIPAA provide adequate protection for patients and are not overly burdensome on providers or insurers. We oppose attempts to change these protections to allow for private rights of action.

Transparency

Transparency of cost is another critical component of overall cost reduction. The advent of a more consumer-directed approach to health insurance coverage is essential to reducing overall health care costs as it will help curb excessive utilization and claims and drive down costs by increasing competition among providers. However, to be fully successful, American consumers must be fully aware of the cost of the health care that they are purchasing. Since the vast majority of American health care expenses are paid by a third party through the administration of health insurance claims, most Americans have no idea what their health care actually costs, and they have been conditioned not to even ask. As a result, the ability for consumers to compare costs and quality when making decisions as to which providers to use and which health care services to select has been virtually eliminated.

NAHU strongly encourages health insurance carriers, hospitals, physicians and other health care providers to voluntarily disclose the prices they pay and charge for care to all consumers. However, since we believe increased cost transparency for health insurance consumers is so critical to reducing costs and promoting consumer-directed care, we support legislative and regulatory efforts at the state and federal levels to require increased transparency should voluntary efforts fail, provided that such governmental efforts are not overly burdensome.