The Presidential Candidate’s Health IT Platforms

The Presidential Candidate’s Health IT PlatformsBoth presidential candidates acknowledge the serious problems in this nation’s health care system and promise to address them. Health IT needs to be a central focus in any plan to reshape this country’s health care system. Any health care ‘fix’ that does not utilize health IT will not adequately prepare us for the future. Both candidates invoke the importance of health IT to reduce health care costs and provide quality health care, but how are they different?

According to a side-by-side analysis of the two candidates’ health care reform positions posted by the Kaiser Family Foundation on its Web site in July 2008, both Barack Obama and John McCain support the expansion of health IT, but their plans differ somewhat in emphasis and detail.

John McCain promotes using health IT to allow doctors to practice across state lines, to better control chronic diseases, and to serve as a tool for telemedicine. He focuses on using health IT to improve quality of care. Senator McCain’s plan, as yet, includes no specifics, timelines or cost estimates.

Barack Obama states on his website, "Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes them difficult to use to coordinate care, measure quality, or reduce medical errors." His focus is on using health IT to contain costs as well as to promote quality measures. He also lays out a plan to implement a national health IT plan in 5 years, spending $10 billion/year.

Our next president will need to be an unflagging supporter of health IT as a critical tool for instituting reform of our health care system. It is urgent that the spiraling costs of medical care be brought under control. Although their approaches differ somewhat, both candidates acknowledge that health IT is a critical part of the health care reform effort.

By: Hannah Rose

Originially written for the Ambulatory Health Information Technology work group of HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) monthly newsletter.