Bush Calls For Federal Health-Care IT PostBush Calls For Federal Health-Care IT Post

President George W. Bush today is expected to issue an executive order creating the post of national health IT coordinator, a sub-Cabinet-level position focused on helping digitize and wire America's health-care system.

The new position will report to Health and Human Services Department Secretary Tommy Thompson. No candidates have been identified, and an HHS spokesman says it's uncertain how soon the job will be filled.

In a speech in Minnesota Monday, Bush said he wants every American to have an electronic health record within 10 years to help reduce medical errors and improve quality of care. Electronic health records can give doctors easier and more comprehensive access to patients' clinical information than is possible in the predominately paper-based record and film-based X-ray systems still used by most U.S. health-care providers.

In that same speech, Bush also pledged to make broadband access available to all American homes by 2007. Bush says that access to broadband also will improve the nation's health-care system by allowing patients in rural communities to more easily seek diagnoses from medical specialists in far-away medical facilities.

The U.S. isn't the only country pushing for the use electronic health records, although efforts here have been focused on the voluntary adoption of the digitized systems by health providers. By contrast, the United Kingdom is in the midst of a multibillion dollar, multiyear technology project to revamp its government-run health-care system and create an electronic health-care system for about 50 million citizens, initially in England and Wales.