When President Obama hosted the Health Care Summit, he emphasized that attacking health care costs is an imperative for the nation's economic recovery and future. In his remarks, he stated "The same soaring costs that are straining families' budgets are sinking our businesses and eating up our government's budget, too." According to the Congressional Budget Office, "total spending on health care will rise from 16 percent of GDP in 2007 to 25 percent in 2025 and 49 percent in 2082. Federal spending on Medicare (net of beneficiaries’ premiums) and Medicaid would rise from 4 percent of GDP in 2007 to 7 percent in 2025 and 19 percent in 2082."

While doing nothing to contain costs is no longer an option, for over a decade health care cost-cutting has been synonymous with a decline in customer care and quality. The typical health care consumer's mind reels at the possibility of not being able to choose their doctor, higher co-payments, or even lower quality care due to insurance companies denying coverage for treatments.

It is too soon to tell if any of these scenarios will become reality as the nation's legislators and representatives of the health care industry work through the issues in Washington. It is ironic, however, that the CBO's January report indicated that the proliferation and adoption of new medical technology and services was the leading cause in the rise of health care expenditures in the last several decades because President Obama's contends that technology of another sort, digitizing medical records and adoption of other IT measures, would be a large step in holding down costs in the future.

While costs have dominated the health care reform discussions, technology has another role to play in addressing the health care consumer's needs. The health care industry is unique in that it is particularly resistant to consumer demands and market forces. Factors such as medical professional shortages and the gateway function of insurance companies (HMO participants can only see doctors who are in their network) have contributed to the overall decline of the U.S. consumer's health care experience. This dissatisfaction has led more and more health care consumers to the Internet as a source of information and a form of self-service. The success of WebMD, which has 54 million users, is testament to patient's desire for more information. Medical practitioners are sometimes confronted with patients who bring in printouts of articles from WebMD after already having self-diagnosed.

The rise of user-generated content sites like Facebook and Yelp has also opened the door to something that doctors, hospitals and even medical therapies have never been subjected to before -- user ratings. Zagat's, for instance, recently announced a partnership with WellPoint insurance company to provide ratings on doctors. The ratings would take into account factors such as communication and environment. Not surprisingly, bloggers in the medical community have dismissed the idea and have even pointed out that rating systems like the ones offered by Zagat's can be used anonymously by patients who have an axe to grind with a particular doctor or does not address clinical competence.

The New York Times quoted a psychiatrist in California who was responding to the Zagat rating's:

“Patients notoriously ignore their doctor’s advice to eat well and exercise,” he said. “Often they quit taking their pills when they’re feeling better. They usually don’t understand the technologies and skills needed for treatment.”

Physicians can complain that the ratings do not address key factors in a patient's overall health care treatment but a doctor's communication skills and environment do matter because patients value these factors.

So doctors face a choice. They can embrace the technology changes or they can ignore them. What has not garnered as much media attention is the potential for Internet-based technology to help doctors manage their practices and provide a better overall experience for their patients. One of the goals of this blog is to point to available solutions. It stems from the belief that a) utilizing relatively low cost technology tools will result in productivity gains and b) implementing technology and environmental fixes matter a great deal to the health care consumer and, therefore, should matter to the health care industry.