U.S. Health and Human Services officials to speak at the Digital Healthcare Conference
By WTN News • 06/17/04 Patient Safety and Information Technology is a national priority
MADISON - Kathleen Heuer, deputy assistant secretary of budget, technology and finance at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and William A. Yasnoff, MD, PhD, FACMI, and senior advisor of the National Health Information Infrastructure at HHS, will be keynote speakers at the Digital Healthcare Conference being held June 22-23, at the Fluno Center in Madison, WI.
Heuer and Yasnoff will discuss their agencys involvement in implementing President Bushs executive order to computerize the healthcare industry within ten years.
The Digital Healthcare Conference sponsored by UW Health and University of Wisconsin in conjunction with the Wisconsin Technology Network will explore the topic: Leveraging IT to Improve Patient Safety and Quality Healthcare.
According to former Wisconsin Governor and current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, by increasing the use of information technology we could conceivably reduce the number of death due to medical errors by at least 70% without difficulty.
Secretary Thompson has said that in spite of advances in twenty-first medicine, the healthcare industry is still using nineteenth-century paperwork. Americans spend more resources on healthcare than people in any other industrialized nation. But we get the right treatment less than 50 percent of the time, Thompson said.
Kathleen Heuer, a Wisconsin native and former CFO for the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation and Deputy Secretary at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, will discuss the Federal Health Architecture (FHA), developed by HHS and will outline the processes for developing health information interoperability standards and methods to implement and support health IT for public health.
William A. Yasnoff will discuss that National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) and its impact on medical care.
According to Yasnoff, NHII is a comprehensive knowledge-based network of interoperable systems that is capable of providing information for sound decisions about health when and where needed. This system will allow complete medical records to be available immediately when needed. The advantages of such a system will allow a link between public health and medical care, develop a standard communications code, and allow consumers to have access to their own records. Yasnoff will explain the need, key roles, and the advantages the NHII will have on society.
There are three fundamental tasks we need to get done Thompson proclaims. First, we need to adopt standards. Second, we need to promote widespread adoption of e-prescribing and electronic health records. Third, we need to encourage the development of local health information exchanges. With such an important and complex process, the computerized healthcare system is soon going to rise, and with it a new age of electronic systems that will save thousands of lives, reduce costs and improve the quality of healthcare.
