WASHINGTON – Thousands of lives - and an estimated $400 billion in healthcare spending - could be saved by putting healthcare information technology to work and adopting best practices, said former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the founder of the Center for Health Transformation.
"In almost every case, the best practice is almost always less expensive," Gingrich said Wednesday in an online presentation sponsored by Siemens Healthcare.
Gingrich gave kudos to President-elect Barack Obama for his bipartisan approach, and he took jabs at Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for seeming to make the House more partisan than ever. He also criticized Sen. Hillary Clinton - "the 1993 Mrs. Clinton" - for her failed healthcare reform plan.
Involving more stakeholders, especially healthcare providers, keeps the doors open and the process transparent and helps Obama put reform on a much better footing, Gingrich said.
"My hunch is that he will try very hard to get this to be a bipartisan bill," Gingrich said. "Otherwise it's not sustainable. In the end it breaks down."
He warned that reform would have to be comprehensive.
"This is a system that needs much more fundamental change than figuring out the insurance side," he said.
Gingrich is advocating an approach that calls for improving individual health, creating a culture of health and modernizing and improving delivery by moving from paper to digital processes. Insurance is the last piece, he said.
Interoperable electronic systems are critical to achieving "breakthrough" change, he said. The adoption of electronic systems facility-by-facility is marginally better than sticking to paper, he said - though real reform lies in being able to move information in a secure way.
Gingrich said both Obama and Health and Human Services nominee Tom Daschle, who is charged with leading healthcare reform, are going for the "breakthrough."
The focus, he said, must be on best practices, data-driven healthcare and reimbursement.
"We must focus on outcome," he said, "but structure today not set up to pay for outcomes."
