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George Halvorson, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan discussed Kaiser Permanente's investments in health information technology, including its KP HealthConnect Project which facilitates an integrated approach to health care delivery by securely connecting Kaiser Permanente's 8.7 million members to their health care teams, their personal health information, and the latest medical knowledge.
Halvorson emphasized that by providing secure 24/7 access to comprehensive health information, the KP HealthConnect Project is allowing care teams to coordinate care at every point of service including the physician's office, the laboratory, the pharmacy, the hospital, the phone, and online. He noted, for example, that when the 2007 wildfires near San Diego forced the closure of certain Kaiser Permanente facilities, continuity of care was maintained for affected plan members because care teams in other Kaiser Permanente facilities had appropriate access to their records through KP KaiserConnect. Halvorson also cited data showing that these investments in health information technology are helping to make care safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable. He cautioned, however, that the rest of the U.S. health care system is not vertically integrated and does not have appropriately aligned financial incentives.
Another witness, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Peter Orszag, testified that his office is examining options - including greater bundling of payments and stronger incentives to provide effective care - that could improve the efficiency of health care delivery and thereby reduce geographic variations in care. Orszag also focused on options for increasing the use of health information technology, including both a subsidy approach and a requirement that physicians use health information technology as a condition for receiving Medicare reimbursement. Orszag said the latter approach would be more effective in achieving near universal adoption of health information technology within five years, but he acknowledged that some physicians - if presented with that ultimatum - may decide to stop seeing Medicare patients.
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