The 14-member task force will be chaired by Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services Director Julie Eckstein and will be tasked with reviewing the current status of healthcare information technology adaptation in the state, addressing issues related to the delivery of healthcare information, analyzing the cost adoption of interoperable healthcare information technology by the healthcare delivery system in Missouri, identifying private resources and public/private partnerships to fund efforts to adopt interoperable health information technology, exploring the use of telemedicine and making recommendations to the governor for implementation.
Other members of the task force will be announced at a later date. Blunt has set a July 1, 2006 deadline for the group to submit its preliminary report and a Sept. 1, 2006 date for the group to submit its final report. The governor allocated $25 million in his budget recommendation to the legislature for a Healthcare Technology Trust Fund.
"The current system for sharing vital healthcare information is badly outdated, expensive and is a disservice to patients in need of care," Blunt said. "I look forward to hearing this task force's deliberations on this issue and to the recommendations to help move the delivery of healthcare in Missouri into the 21st century."
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 31 cents of every healthcare dollar spent in the United States goes toward administrative costs and similar expenses. A 2005 study by the RAND Corporation estimates that the U.S. healthcare system could save $162 billion annually through the widespread use of healthcare information technology.
Most patient data is currently stored primarily in paper form and housed with individual providers, resulting in fragmentation of the healthcare industry. Individual providers have difficulty obtaining complete healthcare information to provide effective and beneficial treatment to their patients and public health agencies are limited in their duties of disease surveillance management and response capabilities by the current paper-based system.
