INHS efforts win praise from Gingrich
Former House speaker and potential presidential candidate Newt Gingrich touted Inland Northwest Health Services as a “dramatic, pioneering effort” Thursday during a keynote address at a healthcare-information technology conference in Spokane.
Gingrich, founder of the Center for Health Transformation, spoke to about 250 doctors, IT personnel and medical administrators at the fourth annual Northwest Medical Informatics Symposium, presented by INHS.
“I think so highly of what the Inland Northwest Health system is doing,” he said, adding that he expects INHS to be a “world leader” in a few years.
Gingrich, 64, received a briefing from INHS and spoke at the conference last year. Founded in 1994, nonprofit INHS provides IT support to 36 member hospitals.
“He’s had people calling me all year, and companies want to come out and visit and see what we’re doing, as well as federal legislators,” said INHS CEO Tom Fritz. “He’s really been trying to promote the whole issue of health IT and use us as one of the examples.”
Launched in 2003, the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Health Transformation is billed as a collaboration of private- and public-sector leaders working to lower health costs and improve patient outcomes.
INHS connects member hospitals to electronic patient records, including doctor orders and radiological images. It stored more than 2.6 million patient records as of this summer.
Ten INHS hospitals, including Deaconess Medical Center, Holy Family and Sacred Heart Medical Center, this year were named among the “100 Most Wired” nationally from the more than 1,200 surveyed by the publication Hospitals and Health Networks, according to INHS.
Earlier Thursday morning, Gingrich spoke at a $250-a-person breakfast fundraiser for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, also held at The Davenport Hotel downtown. About 100 people turned out for the event, although not all bought tickets, a McMorris Rogers campaign spokesman said.
While Gingrich earlier this week told The Washington Times he would evaluate in October whether to run for president, he didn’t broach the subject Thursday.
He contended a dramatic increase in science and the rise of wireless technology may define future U.S. healthcare capabilities, but revitalizing the system necessitates a “fundamental shift back to personal responsibility.”
He asserted there will be four- to seven-times as much science in the next 25 years as in the last 25 years.
“The wave of knowledge is going to be overwhelming, and it’s going to require fundamentally new thought,” he said. “And, it’s going to create enormous opportunity.”
Gingrich criticized the current health system as “so bloated, so inefficient that the effort to finance it will bankrupt us.”
“I am against a national government health system,” he said. “I am very much in favor of a 300-million-payer health system.”
The two-day conference runs through today. One-day admission is $100.