Link: Healthcare IT News: BCBS plans for U.S. Healthcare Reform
Serota's Interview with NY Times: A Plan to Improve Healthcare and Reduce Costs
Diana Manos, Senior Editor for Healthcare IT News, reported today that Blue Cross Blue Shield President and CEO, Scott Serota, said, "Now is the time to forge a better healthcare system for the future. The problem with U.S. reform so far has been lack of vision."
Diana reported that BCBS proposes 5 initiatives:
- Encouraging research on procedures, drugs and healthcare devices
- Pay for performance
- Empowering consumers and providers
- Promoting health awareness
- Fostering public-private coverage solutions
This could be a big step for healthcare reform because BCBS serves 102 million members nationwide, 90% of all U.S. hospitals and approximately 80% of all U.S. physicians. They also are planning to help their members acquire personal health records by the end of 2009. BCBS reported that they intend to help lower healthcare costs using healthcare IT focused on chronic care disease prevention, beginning with diabetes.
This is great news. Over the coming weeks, I will collect a list of payers and providers who publicly state their committment to EHRs on a page on this blog, accessible from a link in the sidebar. So check back for more info.
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That is really great news! I hope to hear more about it from Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Posted by: Jack | January 08, 2009 at 11:49 PM