The Honorable Michael C. Burgess: Will you provide your thoughts on extending the health information technology incentive to mental health providers? I have co-sponsored legislation that I think is very important in extending the program to mental health providers, so they can communicate and work with primary care clinicians.
Dr. Michael Welner: I think it is a great idea. Internists, family physicians, ob/gyn, and other specialists need to have a direct line to their colleagues’ treating the patient. Any one specialist’s assessment, treatment planning, and prescriptions are impacting the patient’s history and presentation at the office of a different specialist with a seemingly unrelated complaint.
These provider communications promote interdisciplinary sophistication, bring team care to the patient in a coordinated fashion, prevent delays in waiting for another consultant to review and recommend based on data that can be immediately available, and promote psychological awareness among medical providers and sensitivity to their patients in ways that might otherwise not be possible with the shorter and more physically focused appointments of the internist’s office. Psychosomatics is real. So is the need for internists, specialists, and surgeons to incorporate information about how people they see are feeling with their bodies. The benefit of that linkage would be many unnecessary tests and procedures avoided because doctors know their patients better.
I have found interdisciplinary communication to be very helpful to my patient care, and experience our care as an extension of their medical care, just as I view the primary care physician and medical specialist an extension of my own care. The health information technology initiative enhances that patient care.
