Rep. Burgess talks health IT
Rep. Michael Burgess, MD, vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, has not always been an advocate of health IT.
“I’ve had a love-hate relationship with health IT,” he said at the fourth annual Consumer Health IT Summit on Sept. 15 in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when he witnessed medical records drenched and covered in black mold, did he realize their importance.
“I changed my opinion on EHRs after witnessing this event of biblical proportions,” he said.
Since then, the HITECH Act has provided the funding needed to get EHRs off the ground, yet challenges remain. “I hear from doctors, hospitals and patients that there are problems,” he said. “There are punitive aspects of Meaningful Use that have people fearful that they can’t get where they need to be in the time involved.”
“We are where we are” when it comes to interoperability and implementation, but ultimately “it’s important for patients to have access to information when and where they need it.” As a Congressman, he said it’s in his interest that the investment in EHRs, which is taxpayer money, is “well spent.”
Meanwhile, the committee has embarked on a 21st Century Cures initiative, which entails the examination of steps necessary to accelerate the pace of cures in the U.S. The committee is looking at the discovery of clues in basic science, streamlining the drug and device development process and harnessing digital medicine and social media at the treatment delivery phase.
“We’re looking at the vast amount of information that has to be processed in the healthcare space,” he said. He noted that there are more than 90,000 health apps out there, but the FDA has only approved 40 of them. “That gives you an idea of the scale of the mismatch.”
As these issues get hammered out, digital health is here to stay.
“Whatever happens next in medicine—young people going into medicine today will have tools at their disposal to alleviate human suffering in ways we never have had in the past,” he said.