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Many say the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) will improve health care efficiency and provide financial benefits. Although only 20% to 25% of hospitals, 15% to 20% of doctors offices and a small number of dentists offices currently use EMRs, that may soon change.
President Bush in 2004 pledged to equip most Americans with EMRs within a decade. In July 2006, the House approved the
Health Technology Promotion Act of 2006. The Senate's version of the bill passed in November 2005, but contains some significant differences from the House bill.
The House legislation would codify the Bush administration's national coordinator office for health IT, create statutory safe harbors to allow hospitals and other entities to provide physicians with health IT software and hardware, and require the government to develop a health IT strategic plan. It also begins to address a topic often lost in far-reaching public policy debates - the need for health data standards that are interoperable and up to date.
The Senate bill codifies the office of a national coordinator, establishes a health IT resource center to offer best practices and technical assistance to promote IT, and provides small grants to help entities adopt interoperable IT systems. However, the Senate bill would not create safe harbors, nor does it address health data standards.
National standards are important because they make it easier to exchange important patient data among those involved in providing care, create personal health records and allow more accurate tracking of patient outcomes. Taken together, these add up to improved patient care.
The House bill would require the federal government to adopt updated standards for processing and paying claims. These standards will enable medical and dental carriers like Delta Dental to handle claims more efficiently
and more accurately track the health status of patients. By fostering more integration of medical and dental records, this new policy acknowledges that medical and dental care is often intertwined.
The House bill also would require health care providers to transition to the most recent standards for classifying the health condition of a patient, commonly referred to as ICD-10 codes. The standards currently in use are outdated and do not reflect scientific advances made over the past several years.
In fact, dental claims currently do not include fields for collecting diagnostic or "reason for service" codes. By moving to these improved standards, the legislation will permit more efficient claims processing, allow more accurate outcomes data to be collected and improve the design of benefits packages. Delta Dental favors the use of ICD-10 codes to pave the way to better assessments of outcomes.
The House legislation would also expedite the process for adopting future changes to health standards.
The Delta Dental Plans Association is working closely with key lawmakers in Congress to promote these and other changes that we believe will improve patient care, reduce errors and lower overall health costs.
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