"As health care costs increase by eight percent every year," said Carcieri in a release, "we must get smarter about how we organize our health care delivery system. Many people would be surprised to learn that up to 30 percent of medical costs are attributed to waste or duplication, while billions of dollars are lost to poor or additional medical care that could have been prevented if the health care providers had access to up-to-date patient information. We need to begin to address these problems so we can reduce costs while improving the quality of care we are providing health care consumers. Investing in information technology for health care will help us do that.
"In Rhode Island, we have already begun to develop a health care information network," Carcieri continued. "My $20 million information technology bond proposal will help us take the next step. Because of Rhode Island's compact size and strong sense of interconnectedness, we have the opportunity to quickly adopt these new technologies and to become a national model in the use of use of information technology in health care. In doing so, we could significantly slow the rate of growth in health care costs while ensuring better outcomes for health care consumers."
