In his first weekly radio address, President Obama stated an ambitious goal: “To lower health care costs, cut medical errors and improve care, we’ll computerize the nation’s health records in five years, saving billions of dollars in health care costs and countless lives.”

The president made a down payment on that promise in the recently passed American Recovery and Restoration Act. The bill includes $31 billion to help clinics, hospitals and other medical providers install electronic medical record systems. That is really good news for Minnesota, which stands to draw in as much as $2 billion to create a 21st century health care system.

Minnesota is well-positioned to take advantage of the new federal initiative because of work we have done in the Minnesota Legislature over the last several years. We invested tens of millions of dollars in loans and grants to help hospitals and clinics purchase and install medical records systems. We insisted that those systems be interoperable, meaning they need to be able to speak to each other.

We moved forward aggressively and asked that all claims and payments be processed in a uniform manner. As a result, doctors will no longer need to employ one person to complete forms for Blue Cross and another to complete forms for Health Partners. We estimate savings of up to $70 million a year from the reforms.

We also reformed the rules under which information is shared among clinics, balancing the efficiencies of electronic exchange of information with the new privacy and security requirements that are necessary in an Internet world.

I am currently working on moving the Health Information Technology and Infrastructure Act through the Legislature. The bill is designed to get the most bang for our electronic health record buck; ensure that different electronic record systems can talk to each other; and focus our resources where they are most needed. Passage of the legislation will take us a large step closer to our vision of a safer, more efficient and lower cost health care system for Minnesota.

Paul Thissen

state representative

District 63A

Minneapolis