Today the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Task Force on Delivery System Reform and Health Information Technology (IT) released an important report, Transforming Health Care: The Role of Health IT, which outlines recommendations for the most effective use of health IT to achieve the triple aim through new models of care delivery and payment reform. I am a member of the task force – we’ve been working on this plan for over a year.

Following the authorization of up to $30 billion to support health IT under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, the report was created to identify real-world examples and best practices that facilitate coordinated, accountable and patient-centered care; and to make recommendations for ensuring that current health IT efforts support delivery system and payment models shown to improve quality and reduce costs in health care, in ways that best utilize scarce public and private resources.

I joined the Bipartisan Policy Center’s co-chairs, former Senators Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Bill Frist, MD (R-Tenn.), and former Governors Ted Strickland and John Engler, at a policy briefing featuring prominent leaders in the field to release the report and discuss how to make it happen.

The report identifies key gaps and barriers to achieving widespread adoption of health IT, including: misaligned incentives; a lack of health information exchange; limited level of consumer engagement using electronic tools; limited levels of Electronic Health Record (EHR) adoption; privacy and security concerns; and multiple federal priorities that all require focus and attention.

The task force also identified several goals and recommendations to overcome these barriers including: aligning incentives and payment with higher quality, more cost-effective health care, accelerating health information exchange efforts, accelerating and supporting engagement of consumers using electronic tools, expanding education and implementation assistance, addressing concerns about privacy and security, and further aligning federal health care and health IT programs. Incidentally, the task force has had a kind of brilliant idea on how to get beyond the unique patient identifier controversy – which is politically stalled. We suggest developing “patient tracking” systems to manage patients securely over the continuum.

After the press event was over I had lunch with Daschle, Frist, Strickland, and Engler to talk further about implementation ideas and how the ACC can help move this. The good news is most of the field of cardiology and the ACC with its quality tools and programs are already working to implement most of these recommendations, but as the health care landscape changes and the cost of health care increases, it is important now more than ever to adopt new models of care delivery.

For more information, visit www.CardioSource.org/HealthIT.