Healthcare leaders from business, insurance, and other parts of the healthcare industry ranked increased use of IT to improve quality and safety of care as the top priority for Congress, according to the Commonwealth Fund Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey. The next two priorities were expanding healthcare insurance to the uninsured and enacting reforms to moderate the rising costs of medical care.

Respondents agreed that the best way to control healthcare costs while improving care was to effectively use IT and offer incentives to efficient, high-quality providers. Healthcare leaders in the government sector were more likely to favor the use of evidence-based guidelines to determine whether a test or procedure should be done.

The survey focused on health policy priorities for Congress over the next five years. Visit this link to access the results: http://www.cmwf.org/surveys/surveys_show.htm?doc_id=358343.