August 2, 2008 Leavitt touts health effort Initiative would let consumers compare costs Leslie Boyd Consumers could shop around for health care services and compare costs, providers and quality under an initiative touted locally Friday by a Bush administration Cabinet official. “Once you measure quality, you can have better value,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said during a media briefing after meeting with local and regional leaders at Mountain Area Health Education Center. Local advocates for the poor and uninsured, however, said the initiative won’t expand access to quality health care. The ultimate goal of the initiative, called Charter Value Exchanges, is to build a nationwide health information network that would allow health care providers to find information on patients such as drug allergies and what treatments they have had for a given medical condition. At the same time, consumers would be able to research cost and quality of specific treatments at any hospital or clinic, perhaps enabling them to make wiser medical care choices. Leavitt said the initiative would drive down the cost of health care and allow more people to afford it. Carlos Gomez, director of WNC Community Health Services, said a standardized electronic records system is “a great idea with great potential.” It likely would reduce medical errors and increase efficiency, he said. “It has the potential to do a lot of good, but I don’t think it would be a solution to the access problem by any stretch.” John Rittelmeyer, an attorney with Disability Rights NC, said the effort could lower costs. “There are just so many layers now, so many places people need to go to get information,” he said. “Making it more available to physicians and consumers could be a big help.” But the Rev. Scott Rogers, executive director of Asheville-Buncombe Community Christian Ministry, said better communication and more transparency in fees and quality won’t lower costs enough for people who are uninsured to afford access to health care. ABCCM operates a free medical clinic, and Rogers said most of the people who go there for care can’t afford to pay more than $30 for services. “With the working poor, what we experience is that they don’t shop around because they can’t afford care, and a lot of them don’t have ready access to the Internet anyway,” he said. The effort likely will improve quality of care for people who do have access, however, said Gary Bowers of the WNC Health Network. All 16 hospitals in Western North Carolina already are linked, allowing doctors to have patient records within minutes rather than hours. “That was phase one,” Bowers said. “Phase two will begin pulling in physicians’ electronic records.” That project, called DataLink, also would allow patients immediate access to their electronic records.