Back in 2004, then-President George W. Bush brought health IT into the spotlight by calling for a nationwide system of interoperable electronic health records within 10 years and establishing the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology by executive order.
Eleven years later, we still don’t have the interoperability Bush sought, but EHRs are the norm in U.S. hospitals and increasingly common even in the smallest physician practices. The 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which created the Meaningful Use incentive program, certainly helped.
While the HITECH Act has President Barack Obama’s name at the bottom, it was a plan hatched with bipartisan support during the Bush administration, and the former president remains a fan of health IT, as he showed in a well-received keynote address to HIMSS15 Wednesday.
“I wanted to make healthcare safer and more efficient. Thank you all for continuing to carry the ball,” Bush said to a nearly packed, 100,000-square-foot ballroom in Chicago’s sprawling McCormick Place. “By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce cost and improve care,” he added.
The self-deprecating ex-president played on his reputation, fair or not, as a simpleton with a little joke about his health IT strategy. “I tried to keep the words short,” Bush quipped. “Then you dropped ‘interoperability’ on me.”
Bush avoided delving into the politics of health IT, but did take a not-so-subtle dig at former Secretary of State — and Democratic presidential hopeful — Hillary Rodham Clinton when he noted that he was the first president to have a BlackBerry, back in 2001, but did not have an e-mail address. Bush joked that it was probably better not to have a record of every communication with his staff, something that became an issue for Clinton last month and continues to dog her.
He did express an opinion on health reform without slamming the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature law. “To protect doctor patient relationships and keep good doctors doing good work, we must eliminate wasteful medical lawsuits,” Bush said.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
He also addressed the high cost of healthcare by noting that he had two knees replaced at Rush University Medical Center right here in Chicago. He asked why a night at Rush had to be more expensive than a night in the luxury Peninsula hotel.
HIMSS CEO H. Stephen Lieber interviewed Bush, just like Lieber did two years ago with another former president, Bill Clinton, and with Hillary Clinton last year. After two Clintons, it seemed only fair to have Bush speak at HIMSS.
Bush did address the inevitable Clinton comparison and the 2016 presidential race, which could come down to his brother Jeb vs. Hillary Clinton. “So do you want Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Bush or Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Clinton?” he asked facetiously.
[Photo from Twitter user @HIMSS]
