H. R. 3137, Data Needs and Related Issues for Implementing Health Care Reform: Hearings Before the Subcommittee Ox Census, Statistics and Postal ... of Representatives One Hundred Third Congres

Excerpt from H. R. 3137, Data Needs and Related Issues for Implementing Health Care Reform: Hearings Before the Subcommittee Ox Census, Statistics and Postal Personnel of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service House of Representatives One Hundred Third Congress Second Session March 2 and 16; 1994

The subcommittee met pursuant to call, at 10:23 a.m., in room 311, Cannon House Office Building, the Hon. Thomas C. Sawyer (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Members present: Representatives Sawyer and Petri.

Mr. Sawyer. Let me say good morning to everyone here today.

This represents the beginning in a series of hearings about the kind of national information system that will be fundamental to the success of any of the several forms of health care reform that is before the nation.

Each of these proposals is going to require a sophisticated information system that is far more extensive than any other data system in existence. It may ultimately contain some level of information about virtually every American who receives health care, which sooner or later becomes all of us.

There are some useful models. There is promising technology, but at least from a policy point of view, we are still really in our infancy in trying to decide what it is that we will need and how we will go about building it.

Any of the proposals that are before us still lack definition, dimensions, boundaries, and in some cases even clearly stated goals.

In the course of these hearings, I would like to ask a couple of questions. What do we want from the health care data system, and what is the appropriate federal role in establishing it?

In answering those questions, we first of all need to define what are our goals. Clearly, they include the importance of reducing paperwork burdens, detecting fraud, and providing for the timely and appropriate transmission of information among providers.

We hope that those data will be easily transferrable. If they are, then such an information system can become virtually the central nervous system of any form of health care reform, but it means that we have got to develop it with great care.

If we do, then such a system can provide us with valuable medical and demographic information that will not only serve individual beneficiaries, but inform a vast array of policy in this country.

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