The U.S. is making strong and fast headway on the adoption of electronic health records, but technology is not enough on its own to reform the nation’s healthcare, said National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Farzad Mostashari at a recent event in Washington, D.C.

At a briefing hosted by the Alliance for Health Reform, Mostashari said healthcare IT is crucial, but it’s not only about technology. “It’s how we use the technology and how we accomplish the goals we set for ourselves.” The goals are threefold, he said: driving better care, encouraging better health and lowering healthcare costs.

“Technology is the enabler; the foundation,” said Mostashari. “Patients need to care for themselves and become partners in their care.”

“There’s a lot of work still to be done, but the curve is sloping upward; we’re on the steep part of the curve right now," he added.

“We’ve set the adoption in place and clearly that is moving,” said Mostashari. “Meaningful use Stage 1 got people on the escalator, but that’s not enough. We need to keep constantly moving up.”

[See also: Mostashari predicts great heights for MU in 2012.]

Mostashari lauded both the Bush and the Obama Administrations for backing healthcare IT advancement with their leadership and funding requests.

And he praised Congress’s wisdom in writing the HITECH Act: “They started with the end in mind, then worked backwards.”

The regional extension centers (RECs) established by HITECH have been key to the success in adoption so far, Mostashari said. Some 147,2008 physicians are currently being helped by the RECs, including 70 percent of all rural primary care providers. “We couldn’t have dreamed this possible three years ago."

Meaningful use should be considered a building block that continues to build, he said. The ultimate goal is to be able to manage the health of populations. “It’s not the whole story, but it’s the beginning of the story. If you can’t manage information you can’t really manage care in a modern healthcare system.”

[See also: Mostashari rankled over HIT survey conclusions.]

“We’re on really a great path,” Mostashari said. “There’s a lot of hard work to be done, still, but we can do it. The future of medicine is going to be brighter than its past.”

Deanna Okrent, senior health policy associate for the Alliance, said there has been much discussion about ways to transform the healthcare delivery system and slow expenditures through the use of EHRs. “There may not be a silver bullet that can accomplish all of that instantly, but there have been inroads made,” she said. “Adoption is not just a concern, it’s the meaningful use that is the long-range objective.”

Anne Marie Audet, vice president for health system quality and efficiency at the Commonwealth Fund, said healthcare IT is “absolutely essential” to providing a platform for healthcare reform, payment reform and to have a positive impact on patients’ health.