Update 9:40 a.m. Jeff Immelt says that one of the best benefits of healthcare IT investments is what it means to doctors in real-time. “If a doctor can match the patient with the treatment — make the right decision using healthcare IT tools, then that’s going to make a difference. Better decisions at the moment.”

Professor Teisberg said that when it comes to the need for health IT, “the point of collecting information is to accelerate learnings by clinical teams.”

Karen Ignagni, stressed the importance of offering “incentives for a healthy lifestyle.” For example, “if you don’t smoke you get a reduction in what you pay. If you have asthma, and comply with your treatment, that gets baked into what you pay. We should do the same thing with obesity that we did with smoking years ago.”

Chuck Todd summed up, and got another laugh, saying: “We got 80% of it solved here in 50 minutes! But one thing we still didn’t solve –- how we pay for it.”

Update 9:25 a.m. Dr. Mintz agrees that the healthcare system is “dysfunctional.” But he says, “you can get great care if you know how to navigate the system. The people who will benefit the most from the changes that are about to happen are the people who have fallen through the cracks. …. It’s the folks who have reasonable income but don’t have good access because it’s so expensive to get access to healthcare.”

John Rother says the priority, in his eyes, is the “need to change the way how doctors are reimbursed. We need to do a better job with [patient] outcomes and feed that measurement back into the system. And the media needs to do a better job. If we only had the attention given to swine flu given to other areas, we’d be making a difference.”

Update 9:15 a.m. Myrl Weinberg says the “movement toward using health IT” is critical and something we’re “seeing already. There’s at least a start.” She says “the most important thing to drive meaningful change is if each individual had an individual medical record and they had control of it.” It lead Chuck Todd to joke: “We’ll, I don’t want to put what I eat on a daily basis on my electronic health record.”

Professor Teisberg focused on the issues of access. “What’s really important is that when we think about improving access it’s about early access to preventive care and early stage treatment. When we talk about access, we get scared about what we’re going to spend at the end of the day. Rather, we need to think that it’s truly appropriate to putting more of our resources toward keeping people healthy early.”

Update 9:10 a.m. Jeff Immelt says “quality, access and cost are the 3 fundamentals of every business today.” He sees the “the biggest positive” that can come from healthcare reform is “if you can every differentiate reimbursement based on quality outcomes.” On the bad side is something that actually can be positive -– but it has to be thought out, he says. “Healthcare is also a great industry in this country –- it creates exports, and it’s a source of innovation. We don’t want to lose our competitiveness in the U.S. when it comes to healthcare technology innovation. It’s a place where we can lead as a country.”

Update 9:07 a.m. Elizabeth Teisberg, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, says a critical piece of changing the healthcare system involves how business leader think. “Businesses need to not think of this [healthcare system changes] as something they are being told to do but something they will engage in.”

Dr. Marshall Mintz of Fairfax Radiological Consultants, says it’s doable, because, “Everyone wants the same thing –- what I call value healthcare. For me it’s 4 main things
Accurate reports. Timely reports. A low cost, safe environment. And creating physician and patient satisfaction. The goal is to provide that kind of care for everyone.”

But Dr. Mintz cautioned, “Everyone wants the latest greatest for their loved ones. We have to change that. …We need a system in which people can get what they want,” but we need manage how that happens in a better way.

Update 9:05 a.m. Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans says, “The cost of healthcare is crushing our economy. Jeff [Immelt] in his initiative today is showing how a company can reduce costs and increase access. If we’re going to sustain what is done, we need to think — cost containment, quality and improvements in the system.”

Myrl Weinberg, President of the National Health Council, echoed the thoughts. “One of the problems of the past has been looking at healtchare problems in silos. Looking at access separately from cost. We need to change that.”

Update 9:00 a.m. NBC’s Chuck Todd opened the serious meeting with a laugh, saying, “How could I say no to an event put on by GE?” But the topics quickly turned serious, with Chuck first bringing up the subject of President Obama’s healthcare vision.

John Rother, Executive Vice President, Policy & Strategy at AARP said the President has done “a great job outlining his approach.” John’s interest is in changing reimbursement incentives. “We’re going to try to reward quality — pay for performance, as well as extending coverage,” he said. “The biggest roadblock: How you pay for it. The long-term goal is to make it more efficient. …. Our philosophy is shared responsibility between government, business and the individual.”

8:45 a.m Prior to this morning’s live webcast, GE’s chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt met with a number of thought leaders on the frontlines in healthcare to discuss the problems the industry faces — and GE’s health commitments and strategy.


Watch it live: GE’s live webcast outlining a new healthcare business strategy begins at 10 a.m. on GE Reports.

NBC News’ chief White House correspondent, Chuck Todd, moderated the closed-door session, which was held at the Newseum — a 250,000-square-foot museum of news located next to the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. In attendance were John Rother, Executive Vice President, Policy & Strategy at AARP; Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans; Myrl Weinberg, President of the National Health Council; Elizabeth Teisberg, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and Dr. Marshall Mintz of Fairfax Radiological Consultants.

The talk is a part of GE’s ongoing effort to solicit the opinions of key thought and policy leaders as the company ramps up its healthcare focus. We’ll be providing updates throughout the morning roundtable.

The views expressed echoed those of dozens of academics, policymakers, doctors and business leaders in the healthcare sector that GE has been consulting in recent months. As one said: “The healthcare bubble is soon going to burst, so we need to address this now.” The consensus view of where to focus? “Access, quality and cost are without question the most pressing issues.”

While we can’t give out details about GE’s new initiative until after this morning’s press conference, many of the experts recently consulted expressed their confidence that “GE is in a unique position to make a difference.” But, cautioned another, “Don’t make it a marketing exercise — it has to have substance and commitment.” We think today’s announcement takes both comments to heart.