Lawmakers speak up for healthcare IT | Healthcare IT News

From the October 2011 print issue HealthcareITNews

Push for legislation despite ‘tough year’ in Congress

Members of Congress have been absorbed this year in federal budget issues and the economy, but not all of them have forgotten the cause of healthcare IT advancement.

Rep. Michael Burgess, MD (R-Tex.) was slated at press time to give a keynote at this year’s HIMSS Policy Summit in conjunction with National Health IT Week, Sept. 12-16 in Washington, D.C.

“When I came to Congress in 2003, I was not the biggest proponent of health IT,” Burgess told Healthcare IT News in an exclusive interview. But, events after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 changed his mind “in a big way.”

At a field hearing post-Katrina in New Orleans, Burgess said he saw “row after row” of paper records at Charity Hospital turned black from mold. Hazmat protection was required to touch the destroyed documents.

A few days after the hurricane, Burgess assisted other doctors in the Dallas Arena in treating victims of the hurricane. Many were in no condition to remember any of their medical history or the medications they were taking, he said. Walgreens was there with computers loaded on a truck, assisting victims who had used them as a pharmacy. They were able to look up prescription records electronically to get some of a patient’s medical history. “These were powerful images,” Burgess said.

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