Medical Device Daily

CHICAGO – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recalled his first campaign for elected office as a Republican in Georgia during the “Nixon period,” where no one, it seemed, thought he fit the part.

However, not only did he ultimately achieve the highest position in the House of Representatives, but he was also the architect of the Republican “Contract with America,” which led to that party dominating both houses of Congress during his watch.

That example obviously was intended to resonate with the laboratory scientists in the audience at the annual meeting of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC; Washington), delivered in the Grand Ballroom of McCormick Place.

“I want to encourage you to see yourselves as leaders in transition,” Gingrich said.

Having launched the Center for Health Transformation in Washington in 2003, Gingrich – also currently bruited as positioning for a presidential run – is now carrying the flag for certain thought leaders in health by suggesting that the U.S. healthcare system is broken.

He doesn't believe universal care is the answer, but rather endorses a model whereby patients take ownership and responsibility for their own healthcare and become savvy consumers of health products and services.

Advances in science and technology, in his view, will be the enablers of this model.

Gingrich also told the story of two films made by Edison, who by 1928 had developed what would become much of the American economy.

In Edison's first film, made in 1898, there were no cars, and trolley cars were pulled by horses. Only a short time into the 20th century, Edison's second film showed “horseless” trolley cars, now powered by electricity.

“I think that's sort of what we're living through,” he said, noting that there will be anywhere from four to seven times “as much science in the next 25 years” as there has been in the past.

To support this, he noted that there are more scientists alive today than in any other time in history. And whereas information once traveled by mail, information today is more likely to be shared through e-mail, voicemail and text messaging almost instantaneously.

“The sheer speed of swapping new ideas has gone up immensely,” Gingrich said. “What does that mean in practical terms? That means you're a group in 1880 trying to decide what it's like in 2006.”

And at seven times more science, it will be similar to the inventor of calculus in 1660 trying to imagine Chicago in 2006, he said.

With this change acceleration, it is absolutely necessary to “move electronic health records and IT [information technology] as rapidly as possible, because volume of information” is going to grow amazingly.

In a scenario of the future, healthcare providers will check their computers or personal digital assistants to find out not that year or that decade's best practices, but the practices that have been determined to be the best on that one day and that day alone. And those who aren't on board will be “obsolete,” according to Gingrich.

Already, he said patients are in the beginning stages of directing their own healthcare. “[One day], patients will come cheerfully into the office with a checklist to see if their physician is following the most current best practices.”

Gingrich pointed to an existing initiative in Florida by Gov. Jeb Bush which directs consumers to a site called FloridaCompareCare.com. The site allows Florida residents to enter a zip code to find the cheapest prices on a particular drug within that code.

He noted other changing consumer behavior, asking for a show of hands in the audience from those who had used Internet travel sites to get the cheapest fares or hotel rooms. In 1978, an airline passenger paid 23 cents a passenger mile for an airline ticket. By 2002, that had decreased to 2 cents a passenger mile.

Pertinent to labs, he asked that if a wedding present or birthday gift can be tracked through FedEx or UPS around the world, why shouldn't a lab specimen be as carefully tracked, suggesting again a patient-centered model for healthcare delivery.

“The reason I support a market system vs. a national bureaucracy is to [push] healthcare back to the patient,” he said.

And he suggested that healthcare delivered through a national bureaucracy will not work since he tends to separate individual responsibility from the drive for good health and the need for preventive health. As an example, he hypothesized a patient who has a heart condition but refuses to take the proper health measures because someone else will pay for his or her care.

Change must be made to the current system, he said, because “medicine will be six times the expense of Social Security on the current trajectory.”

For the laboratory scientist, he emphasized the need to develop a test for Alzheimer's disease so that treatment could be started early, otherwise this disease will cost the U.S. about $1.2 trillion in the “boomer” generation.

Gingrich also endorsed moving as much testing as possible to self-testing or testing by a caregiver in the home, suggesting that Americans compare the cost of missing work and sitting in a doctor's office vs. the potential of all types of 24/7 monitoring in the home.

“See yourselves as pioneers,” he told attendees, “not as people involved at the end of a mature system.”