Senator Advocates for Electronic Health Records

Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton (D, NY)believes making all medical recordspaperless is one solution to fix the systemby reducing inefficiency, redundancy,and medical errors. During a recenthealth care symposium, the senatornoted that, while 16% of the country'sgross national product is spent on healthcare, 46 million Americans are withouthealth insurance.

One fix she suggested is to takeadvantage of information technologyand computerize medical records thatprotect privacy and simultaneously canbe accessed by other physicians orhealth care providers. Electronic healthrecords would guarantee that physiciansand other health care providersshare critical data about patients andthwart medical mistakes, she said.

Senator Clinton is cosponsor withSenate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R,Tenn) of legislation passed in Januarythat would allow an office of informationtechnology within the Departmentof Health and Human Services andmake sure that information technologysystems can seamlessly "talk" to eachother. Supporters of paperless recordssaid the federal government needs to beinvolved to set the standards that guaranteethe systems can communicate withone another.