Tag: "electronic medical records"

What Are We Getting for the $30 Billion We Are Spending On Electronic Health Records?

In 2009, the federal government budgeted $30 billion to incentivize doctors and hospitals to install electronic health records and use them “meaningfully”. Here are the results from Boston’s Brigham & Women’s Hospital — one of the leading academic medical centers in the country:

Of 858 physicians, 540 (63%) were “meaningful users”. Meaningful use was associated with marginally better quality for 2 measures, worse quality for 2 measures, and not associated with better or worse quality for 3 measures.

Meaningful use of electronic health records was correlated with better control of cholesterol in patients with diabetes and of blood pressure in hypertensive patients. The meaningful-use group provided worse treatment of asthma and depression than the non-MU group did.

HT: Ken Terry, Medscape.

Take The Money And Run? Some Hospitals, Physicians Dropping Out of Government Electronic Health Records Program

The 2009 HITECH Act authorized billions of taxpayers’ dollars be spent to pay hospitals and physicians “incentives” to adopt EHRs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the total tab will be $30 billion from 2011 through 2019. The Government Accountability Office has just reported on the results so far.

Not surprisingly, with so much money being spent, there was a lot of uptake: 45 percent of eligible hospitals had EHRs in 2011, versus 64 percent in 2012. For physicians and allied professionals, the share went up from 21 percent to 48 percent. However, the high net adoption rate disguises significant drop outs:

Specifically, within the 36 states that had completed their determinations of which providers would receive incentive payments for the 2012 Medicaid EHR program year, 61 percent of professionals and 36 percent of hospitals that participated in the Medicaid EHR program in 2011 did not continue in 2012. Sixteen percent of professionals and 10 percent of hospitals participating in the Medicare EHR program in 2011 did not continue to participate in 2012. (p. 23)