For better or worse, Vice President Joe Biden left Chicago yesterday having committed no trademark gaffes and deftly avoided discussing the imperiled public option plan, from which the Obama administration appears to be backing away.

Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined doctors for a roundtable discussion at Sinai Community Institute, and talked about the importance of electronic medical records.

Biden announced the release of nearly $1.2 billion to help health care providers establish electronic medical record systems that can be shared between different hospitals and clinics. Such records, the vice president said, make health care safe, more efficient, create better health results and save taxpayers money.

But the Washington delegation touched on many more points. Here are some highlights:

Stimulus success

Biden called the United States’ health care system “broken,” and both he and Sebelius said it was time to change the rules so insurance companies could no longer deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

“The greatest wealth is health,” Biden said, quoting Virgil. He said it is a moral imperative to ensure coverage for Americans.

He touted the administration’s accomplishments with regards to the stimulus packages. Biden said 500,000 to one million jobs have been created from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. He noted that when the Obama administration took over in January, the country was losing 700,000 jobs a month thanks to the worst “bagel” in decades (yes, I’m newly addicted to the West Wing). That has slowed to 274,000 jobs.

“This is beginning to work. It’s actually having an impact,” Biden said. “We stopped the freefall and now we’re beginning to ascend again.”

Friends and frenemies

Biden’s motorcade was met by protesters demanding a public health insurance option, which the administration previously said was a linchpin of reform. In recent days, officials, including Sebelius, have backed off those statements.

Friendlier faces awaited inside. Sen. Roland Burris, U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias were in attendance.

Speaking of the public option … Biden made it clear that he wasn’t going to talk about it.

“We are not here to discuss the debate between a public option and not a public option. I’m just trying to get real basic here,” he said.

But Dr. Steven Whitman, director of Sinai’s Urban Health Institute, complained that no health care programs provide funding for community health workers, which he said are huge contributors to a community.

Just one community health worker, he said, can save taxpayers $250,000 on asthma cases that otherwise would go to the ER during an attack.

He told Biden and Sebelius that he hoped for “a comprehensive health care system that would deliver the benefits for all. It seems to me that a notion of Medicare for all would carry the flow.”

The audience clapped and laughed nervously.

“Thank you very much,” replied a smiling Biden.

Flawless records? Hardly.

All the panelists praised the idea of electronic medical records. But no one talked about what happens when technology fights back. Might the lessons of the Chicago Department of Public Health be worth looking at?

CDPH has had major problems with its electronic records system, so much so that insiders say they are being pulled off clinical duties to perform data entry tasks. It’s all so that CDPH’s new, glitchy system can run in tandem with the state’s billing system. Last year, the glitches cost the city more than $1 million and almost led to the closures of four mental health centers.

High costs of clerical work

Sebelius talked about the large administrative costs incurred by health insurers. She said 75 percent of their overhead was for administrative work, which would be greatly cut back with electronic medical records.

She’s an authority on the subject, having served as Kansas insurance commissioner prior to being elected governor.

Not a bad idea

Peter Ingram, Mt. Sinai Health System’s chief information officer, offered a novel idea: A standard insurance ID card. One card for all insured Americans, which could be swiped at a hospital, showing doctors the patient’s background, insurance information, medical condition, etc.