Richard Tarrant is a successful industry builder. His company began as a health information management startup and was sold for more than one billion dollars, much of which was returned to him as his earned right.
However, one significant consequence of creating and providing this technology which made Tarrant a wealthy person is increased health care costs. Staffing and infrastructure necessary for electronic information management to occur is an expensive adjunct to health care - expenses which have little to do with providing knowledgeable, skilled direct health care for children and adults who seek care in outpatient offices throughout the nation.
As someone who has been a provider and an administrator in health care for a couple of decades, as well as a consultant to providers, organizations and commercial businesses, some observations have become clear:
* Electronic information technology is a tool for insurance corporations to manage their "bottom lines" and profits;
* Purchasing, implementing and utilizing this technology requires expenses far beyond the reach of a typical community-based
* Using this technology requires employing and/or retraining professional and administrative staff and ongoing consultation and training for all staff to correct problems entailed by that utilization and at increasingly high ongoing costs;
* Adopting and using this technology for most outpatient medical and other health care practices typically requires the hiring of additional staff, the purchase of additional office space and medical technology and equipment, as well as regular "upgrades" and training for maximum efficient utilization of costly technology;
* There is an increased intrusion by insurance and pharmaceutical entities into treatment and medical practice activities between patient and provider in the guise of "aiding and assisting" the progress of patient care. This takes the form of fax, postal, telephone and Internet "mailings" demanding service and medical treatment documentation for respective patients/subscribers. Responding to these "attempts to aid treatment" requires support staff and professional time to review patient history as well as to prepare and send the response, which detracts from direct patient care.
* I believe it is important to point out that much of the demand for technologically enhanced health care documentation has been in reaction to legal demands for accountability - demands that have little or nothing to do with actual health care but that add to the cost of health care in profound ways using the law and our legal system as an expensive vehicle.
It is not a stretch to perceive that folks who built and continue to build their personal fortunes by creating and marketing the hundreds of health care electronic information software systems available today have contributed significantly to increased costs for health care in the United States which we hear and read so much about.
Having been active in health care services since 1972 in Vermont, I can comfortably state that the successful provision of each and every health care service depends for the most part on the relationship and trust between the client/patient and the provider of a health care service.
It is clear to me that electronic information technology that is driving the cost of health care higher has little or nothing to do with health and everything to do with documenting and tracking in the pursuit of profit. It is increasingly confusing, expensive, time-consuming and wasteful for the consumers and the providers who are attempting to enhance health.
Building a corporation and selling millions of dollars of electronic information technology do not make someone an expert on either health care or the providing of health care services. Voting Republican only pulls us deeper into the quicksand.
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Sam Conant is a member of vermontpeacetrain who spent years in Colchester providing good health care to Vermonters. He and his physician wife have just closed her solo medical practice, in part because of the bureaucratizing of U.S. health care.
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