Sen. Clinton eyes EMRs as new key to reform: may introduce plan to senate this year.(Practice Trends)(Electronic medical records)(Clinton, Hillary Rodham)

Publication: Skin & Allergy News

Publication Date: 01-APR-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 International Medical News Group

WASHINGTON -- Get ready for a new Clinton plan.

A decade since she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, tried to overhaul the nation's health care system, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is hard at work on a new agenda aimed at streamlining the health care bureaucracy and rechanneling the money lost to administrative costs back into patient care.

Electronic medical records (EMRs), on-line claims processing, and rapid dissemination of new research are the corner-stones of a plan she is hoping to introduce into the Senate this year.

Speaking at the World Health Care Congress, a meeting of insurance administrators and major employer CEOs, Sen. Clinton outlined her vision of an electronically enabled health care system and the federal support that will be needed to get there.

"The American Hospital Association found that for every hour spent on patient care, an additional half an hour at least was required to fill out paperwork. It's wasting time and money. We need to change that so that doctors can focus on the relationship that matters most--the relationship with their patients," she said.

Sen. Clinton contended that administrative hassles have a direct and negative effect on quality of medical care. "With paperwork and increasing financial pressures, providers are being asked to see more and more patients, with less and less time for consultations, even as the flood of new scientific discoveries means clinicians must stay on top of exponentially increasing medical knowledge."

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