William H. Frist: “this needs to change and it must change. We must establish an interoperable privacy-protected electronic medical record…”

“this needs to change and it must change. We must establish an interoperable privacy-protected electronic medical record for every American who wants one. Working together, our Nation can confront these challenges, and we can build an interoperable national health information technology system. We know it will save lives. We know it will save money. It will improve quality and it will lead to huge measurable progress in the medical field, in the health field. We face enormous problems as a result of the underinvestment in health information technology. No industry as important to our economy as health spends as little on information technology. Our Nation has nearly 900,000 doctors and over 2.8 million nurses. Americans visit a doctor 900 million times per year. We have nearly 6,000 hospitals all over the country. Our health care system is enormous, yes, but it is dangerously fragmented. Even a small efficiency improvement can greatly reduce cost and improve quality, and there is plenty of room for improvement.”