Looking Forward to Implementation and Beyond
Mark Merritt, M.A.
10/7/2008

Thanks so much Kerry. It is great to be here and I am going to abbreviate in our remarks because of the late time in the day. I just want to say from what I have learned today, it has been kind of inspiring, informative, interesting good questions, tough questions. It shows that we are really making progress and that is really attributed to what you have done Kerry, and the whole team at CMS and for you and Kim Kline, and Tracy ... and all of you to put this event together so fast and appeared to be so successful, and is quite impressive and PCMA is very happy to be a part of it. I would say just before introducing Speaker Gingrich that the one thing that we all know is that E-prescribing will rise and fall with how much individual physicians and the National Physician Groups own this, it is something to happen in real time. The standards are in place. The incentives are in place. The money is there. Everything is coming together, but the last step for physicians to individualize this, personalize on it in a new and different way and I take my own doctor as an example who I love; I have had him for about 15 years. I talked to him about e-prescribing. Once I asked him what he thought about it he goes “Oh, e-prescribing is great. It saves time, it saves money, no errors, and it is fantastic, best thing that ever happened in the physician community.” I said, “Well when you are going to start using it?” and he goes “Well I don’t know, but someday we all will.” I think the lesson is individually we need to start owning, like recycling or anything else. It is kind of a doctor’s office by doctor’s office situation and we were able to look forward and we really think this is a new take off level and we are excited about it and I am very honored to introduce on our next speaker, Speaker Newt Gingrich founder of the Center for Health Transformation. It was speaker Gingrich along with Senator Kerry, who really started this whole impetus for e-prescribing and said look we need to reach across the aisle, put etiology behind this, and start saving life, and start calling this for what it is. This is a national crisis and emergency, 1.5 million lives hurt and lost with 7000 actually killed because of medication errors. It was so inspiring to see speaker Gingrich to get involved in this, and take a lead, get public with it early on. He has been such a leader in this. It was his vision has really helped to make this policy reality along with Senator Kerry, and so many others. But, when we saw that ... signed by Senator John Kerry and speaker Newt Gingrich in Wall Street Journal, it really changed everything overnight. So, with no further ado, I just want to thank all of you for your participation. Thank you and Secretary Leavitt for having us here and please let me introduce Speaker Newt Gingrich.