Russ Carnahan Quotes

Despite heated political debates on the future of our health care system, there is bipartisan agreement that health IT can be a powerful tool to transform and modernize the delivery of health care in our country. Health IT is about helping patients and their loved ones.

Electronic medical records are, in a lot of ways, I think the aspect of technology that is going to revolutionize the way we deliver care. And it's not just that we will be able to collect information, it's that everyone involved in the healthcare enterprise will be able to use that information more effectively.

Cerner's focus over the last 20 years has been to provide healthcare, predominately healthcare providers, with advanced clinical and management information systems. Our mission is to connect the appropriate persons, knowledge, and resources at the appropriate time and location to achieve the optimal health outcome.

These core principles - helping patients, preventing medical errors, promoting best practices and improving quality - are the reasons that health IT is featured in both the 2012 Republican platform and 2012 Democratic platform.

A public option is essential to creating the cost-savings necessary to offset the cost of providing all Americans access to affordable health care.

I think that the health care industry is so complex that it doesn't necessarily start with a single killer app. You go back to the early days of the personal computer - when I joined the industry, we really didn't know what the killer app was going to be.

Reversing the escalation of health care costs is going to need more than legislation, yet it can be done without imposing rationing, as critics of reform fear.

I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses. But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them.

Supported by digital data, new data-driven tools, and payment policies that reward improving the quality and value of care, doctors, hospitals, patients, and entrepreneurs across the nation are demonstrating that smarter, better, more accessible, and more proactive care is the best way to improve quality and control health care costs.

One of the biggest challenges to medicine is the incorporation of information technology in our practices.

Republicans should embrace the possibility that Obamacare could pave the way toward lower health care entitlement spending overall. That won't be easy. But it's not unthinkable, either.

It is time to maximize and prioritize our health care dollars.

After a century of striving, after a year of debate, after a historic vote, health care reform is no longer an unmet promise. It is the law of the land.

Whether it's by helping us search for health-related information, connecting us with doctors through online portals, or enabling us to store and retrieve our medical records online, the Internet is starting to show the promise it has to transform the way people interact with and improve their own health and wellness.

One of the things that made Epic strong when I wrote the original code was that it never occurred to me to do anything other than put the patient at the center. I developed a clinical system at a time when the health care world had pretty much only billing and lab systems available.

Health care comprises nearly 20 percent of our national economy, but outdated bureaucracy and red tape have stifled competition and raised costs. As a result, today more than 45 million are without any health coverage.

No employer is going to hire robustly until they know what the health care cost is going to be.

Cerner is a company that just celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1999.

As a single-payer advocate, I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passed an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost-effective way.

Developments in medical technology have long been confined to procedural or pharmaceutical advances, while neglecting a most basic and essential component of medicine: patient information management.

Medical need is an infinitely expandable concept. There is always one more marginal procedure that can be done. There is no end to the medical and surgical treatments that a technologically sophisticated and advanced society can give to aging bodies.

In our experience at Safeway, we're confident that we can actually improve the quality of health care while taking costs down and using the savings to help finance coverage of low-income people who are clearly going to need help to pay for insurance.

Catalyzed by the Recovery Act, adoption of electronic health records is increasing dramatically.

Please be assured that as we move along through the implementation of health insurance reform, making sure that we find efficiencies within the existing system, is foremost on the President's mind.

The only way to get health care abundance is to use technology.