Health IT Problems Again and Again
Various law blogs are reporting that the stimulus bill contained another reason for providers to avoid electronic medical records: Breaches of more than 500 patients trigger requirements to report to HHS, advertise on Web sites, notify individual patients, and report to the local media. It takes work to violate 500 paper records. Violating 500 electronic records might take no more than a couple of keystrokes.
The stimulus bill contains HIPAA extension provisions that will probably add significant regulatory costs to an already overburdened system. It creates more jobs for bureaucratic overseers and makes service providers like Google Health subject to HIPAA restrictions. link, and PointofLaw, February 23.]
The news on Health IT seems to get worse and worse.
The point that has been made at this blog several (many?) times is that technology changes only work when they are adopted willingly by the providers because they meet the providers’ needs.
They do not work when they are forced on the providers by the demand side of the market.
A new development in Health IT — The Wall St. Journal Health Blog reports the U.S. Military is in the process of shifting health care records to an electronic database. Here’s the latest:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123929168372205381.html