CHICAGO – Better patient care leading to healthier patients, improved outcomes and decreased cost is a bipartisan, uniform goal, declares Congressman Michael Burgess, MD (Texas-26).

To reach that lofty goal, however, all stakeholders need to get involved, the four-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Ob/Gyn with 25 years of practicing medicine will tell attendees at his opening keynote address this morning at 9:00 am CST.

Burgess describes himself as someone who is involved in policymaking, endeavoring to play a role in what healthcare reform looks like in the future and how health IT can move the country into the 21st century by enabling the capture and use of information to deliver quality healthcare.

"It's important for people to understand that there's a role to play in offering their comments during the ONC's (Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT) comment period," he said. "The final form of whatever the health IT piece of healthcare reform takes is not yet set in stone. There are people out there with good ideas, and I hope they participate and make it a very active process."

Burgess, who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its subcommittee on healthcare, and recently founded and is Chairman of the Congressional Health Care Caucus, will offer up his own ideas of what the final product should look like based on his observations from a lifetime of having dealt with health IT as an early adopter.

His nearly daily talks with physicians in his district have highlighted anxiety about the lack of clarity over definitions, among other things. As policies and definitions are hammered out and released, Burgess expects the anxiety to dissipate. Still, he said, "It is important for the healthcare provider community as well as those who support them with information systems to stay well informed and up to date about the changes that are occurring in this environment," he said.

"We want to be certain that people who understand how these systems operate in the healthcare community are heard from during the (public) comment period, and the ultimate end user – the provider, the doctor – we want to be certain that they understand the ramifications of purchases that they might make or planning to make and what is expected of them when these systems are in broad use," he said.