Database on health broadens

• By TED GRIGGS
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Feb 27, 2008 - Page: 1D

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In the not-too-distant future, physicians in Louisiana will have to begin reporting their patient treatment data to a central database, the same way that hospitals now do, a state health-care official said Tuesday.

The push for transparency is being driven by the health-care system’s payers, insurance companies, and “choosers,” employers and their employees, said Dr. Michael Fleming, president of the Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum.

“While employers are paying for that big set of insurance care out there, they don’t like what they’re paying because they’re not getting what they’re paying for,” Fleming said.

Fleming was one of the speakers at the Louisiana Hospital Association’s first annual Winter Healthcare Leadership Symposium.

An oft-cited study by the World Health Organization showed that the United States spends twice as much on health care as any other industrialized country, Fleming said. Despite that, the United States ranked only No. 37 in terms of health-care quality.

“My question is, ‘If we’re spending twice as much as everyone else, why aren’t we No. 1?” Fleming said.

The push for transparency is taking place in part because of consumer-driven health care, an effort to make consumers take more responsibility for their health-care decisions, Fleming said. That push may in turn be the tipping point for physicians adopting personalized electronic health records.

Fleming cited Fidelity Investments, Disney and Wal-Mart as firms that have created portals to allow customers, not just employees, to create personal electronic health records.

“Do you think that the financial services industry, the entertainment industry and the retail industry are going to fail at this? No. And you know why? Because they know consumers,” Fleming said.

The health-care industry does not because it has never had to, he said. In the past, health-care providers told consumers what to do, where to do it and when to do it, he said.

Capturing the information and measuring it is important, Fleming said. If providers cannot collect and analyze the data, they won’t be able to use it to improve their performance, and consumers won’t be able to make better choices.

State health officials have said most physicians’ practices have been reluctant to implement electronic health records because of the expense and inconvenience.

John Matessino, the hospital association’s president and chief executive officer, asked how Fleming planned to get physicians to send their patient results into a central database.