OMB Director Peter Orszag's Crucial Role In The Obama Administration
This weeks' New Yorker magazine has an excellent article on OMB Director Peter Orszag by Ryan Lizza. I have enjoyed my discussions with Peter ever since he arrived at the President's Council of Economic Advisers in 1995 and later at the Brookings Institution and at the Congressional Budget Office, which he directed in 2007 and 2008. Although the article strikes me as a little too cute, Lizza accurately describes Peter's superior analytical mind, dispassionate manner, and far seeing policy recommendations. Peter's strength, like President Obama's, has been his ability to understand all sides of a policy without letting that cloud strong and clear policy recommendations. President Obama has placed a big bet on Peter's determination that health care reform can reduce the deficit. Most Washington insiders think of health care reform as costing a lot more. Who turns out to be right will make a big difference to all of us taxpayers and to President Obama's political future.
Integrated IT solution for healthcare will save megabucks
Obama has this part of it right. I'm dealing with a medical records information flow nightmare right now for a family member -- about 30 phone calls and constant harassment of healthcare providers were required to simply get records needed for followup treatment to the primary care provider. This has been going on for 3 weeks, and we had a couple of emergencies (drug side effects/interaction) that couldn't be quickly addressed due to lack of information at the PCP level several days after release from hospital. Not only were the records not available to the PCP, but the specialist involved had gone on vacation and couldn't be reached. This was costly for the patient, and extremely stressful for all involved, including the primary doctor.
A medical care provider SHOULD be able to log onto a secure server and see ALL a patient's healthcare records, up to the minute, in one place. A patient should be able to do the same . . . the same way I can look at my bank balance and transactions, my online brokerage accounts, etc. on secure servers. Why can't I do this for my medical history?
You just can't believe how much time and money (and medical diagnostic and drug prescription errors) this kind of system would save.
Obama is right on this one -- it will save money, reduce errors, in some cases it will save lives, and will, overall, increase quality of care. It can't happen fast enough for me and my loved one.
Integrated IT solution for healthcase will save megabucks
Thanks for sharing. Unfortunately, there are way too many incidents like your's.