Goverment imposed HIT a bust for health care but good business for the cronies

 Background: Part of the 2009 stimulus bill was a program (called HITECH) that  provided 27 billion $ to subsidize the purchase of electronic health records systems by medical practices but with certain conditions of use.

If anyone believes that the salvation of health care in the country ( or Great Britain for that matter) is in the electronic health records they should spend two minutes and read this information packed,insightful commentary.

First of all, the Rand corporation is backtracking on the glowing projections it has made regarding cost saving by the establishment of electronic health records.Rather than the 77 Billion $ in savings they projected they now admit it cost money-not saved money.The Rand study was widely quoted as demonstrating what great things EHRs would bring.

Ask almost any practicing physician who is taking time away from patient care to unravel and master the so-called "meaningful use" requirements how well the program is working.

The highly touted HIT program for the British NIH was a fiasco and the government has admitted as much and is stopping the program.Both the VA and the Defense Departments Electronic Health Records have been the target of well deserved criticism.

The following quote from John Goodman's health Policy Blog which is linked above talks about the bottom line and how the Mafia Rule serves us well again.

 "RAND’s 2005 report was paid for by a group of companies, including General Electric and Cerner Corporation, that have profited by developing and selling electronic records systems to hospitals and physician practices. Cerner’s revenue has nearly tripled since the report was released, to a projected $3 billion in 2013, from $1 billion in 2005."


So part of the stimulus bill was to take tax payer money, strong arm and sweet talk physicians into  purchasing computer systems which turned out to decrease their efficiency in clinical care but may increase hospitals proficiency in billing ,saved CMS no money but increased the revenue of certain well connected purveyors of electronic records systems.In short, by today's legislative standards a very successful program.

H/T to Paul Heish and his blog FIRM see here.

Cerner corporation has profited greatly from HITECH. See here for a blog entry from the InformaticMD at Health Care Renewal which discusses Cerner's activities in Great Britain and the NHS monumental failure in electronic health records.