Senator Warner spoke about the need for comprehensive health care reform during a conference of the Federation of American Hospitals this morning.  He said it appears the "stars have aligned" to make meaningful progress on reform this year.

"We must emphasize quality and value through a commitment to modernization,” he said.

Senator Warner outlined a three-pronged prescription to reforming the system: infrastructure, information, and incentives.

• Infrastructure:  Senator Warner spoke of the need for a health information technology system “to eliminate errors, reduce paper work, and generate savings over time.”  He said that while the recovery package provided funding for the development of an HIT system, we still need to work on national standards to address privacy concerns and interoperability features --and “the time has passed for excuses about ‘legacy’ or ‘proprietary’ systems.”

• Information:  We also must spend sufficient resources on measuring what works, to figure out best practices for providers, patients, and payers “by analyzing clinically-based information to measure quality,” Senator Warner said.

• Incentives:  Senator Warner said that we need to rework payment incentives to promote “value over volume.”  Specifically, we can achieve this be reevaluating incentives such as risk adjustment, shared savings, and medical liability relief.   He also said the we should have a serious conversation about end-of-life issues. 

As a private citizen and as Governor of Virginia, Senator Warner worked with all the stakeholders to improve access and affordability to health care for millions of Virginians.  He said that a similar approach will need to be taken in Washington this year.  

“This debate in particular will require that all stakeholders and all political perspectives are fully engaged,” he said.  “For us to achieve true comprehensive reform, we can't allow traditional partisan thinking to get in the way.”

Senator Warner does not support a government-run, single-payer system, but sees a unique opportunity where politicians, consumers, business, labor, insurers, drug companies all appear willing to sit down together to build on what works -- and fix what is broken in our health care system.

UPDATE: Media General's Neil Simon spoke with some of Virginia's health care professionals who agreed with Senator Warner:

The health care industry largely agrees with Warner's approach, said Laurens Sartoris, president of the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association. The Richmond-based group represents 46 member health systems and hospitals throughout Virginia. 

"He's absolutely right about the Tower of Babel" among the medical community, Sartoris said. "You lock into one vendor's system and it doesn't necessarily talk to another vendor's system," he said, and that creates a barrier to providing seamless coverage for patients. 

Satoris said some hospital administrators may be concerned about being tied to national medical practice standards. 

"There still has to be enough flexibility for practitioners to push the envelope and to be able to go beyond today's standards," he said. 

Click here to read the entire article.  To read the speech, click here.