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Delaware has one word
for health care: plastic
By Trudy Walsh GCN Staff Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) definitely prefers plastic to paper when it comes to health care. Carper spoke at a conference on Capitol Hill yesterday sponsored by the eHealth Initiative, a consortium of health care organizations that promotes technology as a means of improving health care, and a congressional steering committee on telehealth and health care informatics. Financial institutions based in Delaware issue 60 percent of the nation�s credit cards. With all this experience in the card business, Carper said, Delaware would be the perfect place to try out a tracking system that would store all of an individual�s health care information on a plastic card. �I see Delaware as a laboratory of democracy,� he said. Carper said his mother is a resident of a health care facility for older people, where she receives excellent care. But a few years earlier, her situation was more difficult�she had many different doctors who prescribed many different medications. Tracking all those medicines was complicated, with a significant potential for medical error, Carper said. Delaware this month embarked on a project to develop a statewide electronic access system for health care. Patient Safety Institute Inc. of Plano, Texas, will supply a health information network for the state. The health care access system will work much like a credit card, Carper said. �I keep the card. I control the access.� A patient would give the card to a health care provider, who could access information about the patient�s history and health care. Carper said he will request that the General Accounting Office perform a study of the plan to find out how such a plan could save money and reduce treatment errors. Carper said that if the Delaware plan were implemented nationally, it could save �tens of billions of dollars. That�s real money in Delaware.� |
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