NYT: Health Care Technology Is Promise Unfinanced (GINGRICH blasts Admin!)

[DeepModem Mom]

Health Care Technology Is a Promise Unfinanced
By STEVE LOHR

Published: December 3, 2004


From the president on down, the Bush administration has been a proponent of modernizing the nation's creaky health care system with information technology.

But while the administration's words of support for a high-technology future for health care have been plentiful, the dollars, it seems, are scarce.

The huge federal spending bill recently approved by Congress eliminated a seemingly modest $50 million request for the office of Dr. David J. Brailer, who was appointed the national health information technology coordinator in May....

***

...."Congress, in its infinite wisdom, zeroed-out David Brailer's office," said Newt Gingrich, the Republican former House speaker, who is the founder of the Center for Health Transformation, a health policy group. "They couldn't find $50 million to signal that David Brailer has a real job and what he's doing is important. Frankly, I think it's a disgrace."

The Bush administration, Mr. Gingrich said, bore most of the responsibility. "No one in the White House or in the senior staff of the Department of Health and Human Services fought for this," he said....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/03/technology/03health.html

[physioex]

1. Newt is a very creepy person....

However it's going to be very entertaining to watch them clobber themselves...

[flordehinojos]

2. back in 1994 when he became speaker of the house and all the press was

hailing him as a great leader ... he said that his two favortie books were Mein Kampf and the Bible ... I think he mentioned the Bible for convenience but Mein Kampf goes to the heart of what this man really believes in... I also think GWB copied a page from him and then perfected it with the help of karl rove, condosleeaze rice, colin the house slave powell, tricky dicky, and all the rest.

newty ought to just shut up. i think he wants a piece of the dollars he is complaining somebody else in the same line of work he is did not get and could have showered him with some.

[rodeodance]

3. te he--Newt's project did not get funded--te he

I have to laugh--as Newt is always salivating over Bush and how great he is!!

[izzie]

4. This move into spending on the service/MIC is doing well

I am not sure it is for the person who fights but we do seem to be cutting down on things the country needs and going in to special things congressmen need to be the good guy and for military power. Better we have Pell grants and health then a new fighter but then what do I know.

[depakid]

5. I seriously doubt anyone in the public health community

expected this to get funded. I remember that we discussed the administration's "proposals" in a strategic planning class last winter term- and everyone- and I mean everyone laughed about it.

There's no way Republicans will ever establish uniform standards for clinical informations systems- much less properly fund a project that might actually work and eat into one or another of the companies' competing non-compatible system's profits. No way in hell.

The only way this is going to happen in America is locally/regionally through things like the Santa Barabara Data Exchange or through opt-in peer to peer collaborative setups like the one being developed by the Patient Safety Institute.

See, e.g.

http://www.chcf.org/documents/ihealth/SantaBarbaraFSWeb.pdf

http://www.ptsafety.org/pressroom/02-03PatientSafetyInstitute.pdf