Press Releases

WASHINGTON –Today, Healthy Future Task Force co-chairs, Congressman Vern Buchanan (FL-16) and Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02), and the Doctor-Patient Relationship SubcommitteeChairman Larry Bucshon, M.D (IN-08)., Subcommittee Member Greg Murphy, M.D. (NC-03), and Subcommittee Member Beth Van Duyne (TX-24) announced the Task Force’s solutions to improving the patient care experience and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship.

In an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, the Doctor-Patient Relationship Subcommitteemembers outlined proposals to improve the patient care experience by allowing providers to focus on patients over paperwork, modernizing antiquated processes that delay patient care and addressing provider shortages through oversight of health care workforce programs.

“We are working to get Washington, D.C., out of the doctor's office and give patients and their doctors the freedom they need to make their own healthcare decisions, as opposed to Washington bureaucrats who hamper innovation, drive up costs, and take time away from patient care. Patients, in consultation with their doctors, should always be in the driver’s seat of their medical decisions,” the Representatives wrote.

Overview of solutions by Healthy Future Task Force Subcommittee on Doctor-Patient Relationship:

• Get Washington out of the doctor’s office: Remove harmful federal mandates, improve quality metrics on providers, and ease the complexity of Electronic Health Records to ensure the patient stays the main focus of visits
• Ensure access to quality providers: Make sure investments in graduate medical education are translating into improved care, reauthorize the SUPPORT Act, and create certainty on provider reimbursement
• Grant timely access to care for patients: Reform prior authorization process to stop this cause of delay of care by streamlining and standardizing prior authorization to encourage real-time decisions.

Click HERE for a more detailed one pager.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy created the 17-member Healthy Future Task Force to develop solutions to modernize the American health care system to lower costs, keep Americans healthy, develop better therapies and cures, and provide Americans with more choices. The Doctor/Patient Relationship Subcommittee is one of five subcommittees part of The Healthy Future Task Force, which also includes the Treatment Subcommittee, Security Subcommittee, Modernization Subcommittee and Affordability Subcommittee.