The Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Task Force on Delivery System Reform and Health IT recently released a set of recommendations for the most effective use of health IT dollars to support delivery system and payment reforms to achieve improved health, better health care, and reductions in the cost of care.  The Health Project is co-led by former Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist and includes a broad range of nationally respected experts and leaders from many sectors of health care. The Task Force on Delivery System Reform was created to focus on two primary goals: 

•      Identify real-world examples and best practices that facilitate coordinated, accountable, patient-centered care; and

•      Make recommendations for ensuring that current health information technology (IT) efforts support delivery system and payment models shown to improve quality and reduce costs in health care, in ways that best utilize scarce public and private resources.

The report’s findings that health information technology (health IT) “plays a critical role in supporting new models of care and payment designed to achieve health care’s triple aim: improve health, improve the experience of care for patients and families and reduce the cost of care.”  ONC agrees that continued rapid progress on ensuring the adoption and meaningful use of health IT will be aided by, among other things: ongoing progress in the secure exchange of health information, even greater availability of consumer-oriented health IT tools, and building on the already rapid progress on adoption of electronic health records.

These recommendations are supportive of ONC’s vision and efforts to encourage and coordinate adoption of health IT and are consistent with State HIE program activities.

To read the full report, click on the link to take you directly to BPC’s website.

Transforming Health Care: The Role of Health IT

The numbers are in and IHIT, with the help of Indiana’s five regionally-based Health Information Organizations (HIO’s), is making steady progress towards advancing sustainable, secure, standards-based health information exchange throughout Indiana’s rural communities and underserved populations.

Some highlights as of December 31, 2011:

• 101 of 123 acute hospitals have signed contracts with a HIO
• 2532 active participants  for directed exchange (Push)[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]
• 5511 active participants for query exchange (Pull) )[includes unique ambulatory providers and individual labs]
• 13,365,891 transactions sent (Directed/Push) [includes lab results, discharge summaries, public health results, visit summaries]
• 1,205,317 transactions for patient record inquiries

As the numbers show, Indiana is well on its way towards securely moving electronic health data in a meaningful way to improve coordination among health providers to help them achieve improved health outcomes for their patients.