WASHINGTON — “The administrative and bureaucratic machinery” of the nation’s medical system is broken, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said yesterday, “but it can be fixed.”

Addressing a convention on the medical uses of computer technology, Whitehouse diagnosed what he called “major system failures” in the heath-care industry. As a possible remedy, the Rhode Island Democrat prescribed legislation that he has introduced.

“Relying on market forces” to solve the industry’s problems “is a prescription for defeat,” Whitehouse told the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. The organization seeks to promote the use of computer tools to improve American medicine — a popular topic in political circles.

The general argument of information-technology advocates is that the use of electronic records can vastly reduce the rate of medical errors and accelerate the spread of new medical treatments.

Whitehouse cited what he called three failures in the medical system:

•The industry does not invest enough in the prevention of illness or in the quality of medical care.

•The industry does not invest enough in information technology.

•The formulas that Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers use to pay doctors and hospitals for treating patients do not sufficiently encourage prevention or information technology. Based on Rhode Island’s experimentation with preventive medicine and with the use of computerized medical data, freshman Senator Whitehouse has proposed three bills — the first legislation he has introduced. The bills would:

•Create a $100-million pool of federal grants to encourage preventive care and computerized medical record-keeping at the state and local level.

•Create a private, nonprofit entity charged with building an information technology network for the medical industry.

•Give state health departments the power to require insurance coverage of the best-quality care.

“Inefficiency is not mandatory,” Whitehouse told his audience at the National Press Club. But he said that reform of the medical system “will not happen spontaneously.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com