Recovery Act Gives $1B Boost to Health IT Funding

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
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The US Department of Health and Human Services reports that nearly $1 billion from the Recovery Act will go toward health care IT initiatives. These funds are to be used to “help health care providers advance the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology ... and train workers for the health care jobs of the future.” I’d imagine some of you have some rather strong opinions about this.

"Health information technology can make our health care system more efficient and improve the quality of care we all receive," said Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. "These grant awards, the first of their kind, will help develop our electronic infrastructure and give doctors and other health care providers the support they need as they adopt this powerful technology."
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Nice way to upgrade the heath info-structure just before turning it into socialism heath care. :eek:

Just ask a retaired VET if they like going to the VA. :(
 
I think you are right Terry. I bet this thread explodes. I'll be very interested to find out how many people are in favor of bigger government at this point. With the amount of money this country owes now, adding another entitlement might push us over the edge.

Alright I'm ready for the flame war...
 
There is NOTHING in this so far, that says the monies will help existing offices and hospitals either upgrade or purchase hardware and software to make electronic recorde do-able.

There is so much bullshit here......

First of all.........(this comes from close frineds and my own personel experience)......

There is no unified software AND no one yet knows which software will be selected to run the electronic data.
There are very few people in the government that have any clue how to do this. The training so far has been via companies vying to be the government's supplier of software.

I would suspect the central governments hardware to be so outdated that the monies needed to upgrade will be unbelievable.

It MAY be helpful in that the overall infrastructure will be upgraded with faster broadband and server tech which may trickle down...............but...........will probably be overpriced by 10 to 100 times because it's the government.

My overall suspicion is that electronic data collection and "sharing" will merely lead to data mining and overall corruption of security.........not even on the radar of most people yet.:eek:
 
This could be used for bad or good use. its too early to tell how this money will be used exactly; everything said was vague in that report. Our health care system is changing in a direction, that is certain. And it all depends on how the democrats and republicans, along with the president act accordingly. Will they reason together and find an Aristotelian golden mean, a compromise, or will completely dismiss each other and get nothing done?

The IT Health jobs I'm guessing will make health care more streamlined, with less hard copies and better organization through searches. This has the capacity for data mining information on us so private insurance companies can punish those who are less likely to be healthy, also to help find illnesses and family records that might effect the rest of ones family. For instance, if there is cancer in one's grandmother, I may be more likely to have it. Thus a private insurance company might discriminate on me by raising my health insurance cost. The worst case scenario is will be a situation like Gattaca the movie. The best would be saving money, finding cures, more preventative maintenance comfortably used, and jobs created. Humans can use science and technology to destroy countries or find cures. Its not science and technology that we have to blame though, its our dark side that we so easily prefer to cling too for greed and power.

It depends on who this information is handed too. I do not want a private insurance company to discriminate on me, yet I want cheaper health care that is more apt/fit to deal with today's issues. It was only a matter of time before this was going to happen. Now it just depends on which side human nature decides to cling too. Will we choose subterfuge, power and greed for a few, or health "care" for many?
 
The $1 billion will disappear in the vast waste of the federal government, or into the pockets of politically connected opportunists. Anyone who thinks this will actually improve or make health care cheaper needs to take off the rose colored glasses.

The most likely result will be bureaucrats holding meetings, and making a bunch of new federal mandates that will end up raising the costs for everyone.
 
I for one can say that this stimulus will make a significant impact on healthcare.

I work for a small (100 bed) non-profit community hospital, and can say that our new wireless system will be directly paid for by ARRA. How does that help patient care? You may be thinking about ok, well patients get wifi. That doesn't even begin to cover it. For us, it will enable us to finally move forward with electronic bedside medication verification. This type of technology prevents wrong doses or giving contraidicated drugs. It also enables doctors to request information on their PDAs as they are walking in from the parking lot about the patient they just got paged about.

EMR (electronic medical records) of course will be fantastic, but I think the general public underestimates how huge a task it is to not just go fully electronic, but to be able to exchange said information with other providers. Every hospital and doctor's office uses any number of different systems to store their records, all in different formats. While there are interfaces, most all are custom written, and many of those are buggy at best. God forbid either party should upgrade to a new version of their health information system.

In order for healthcare IT to move out of the stone ages, what is needed is a sea change of how healthcare and IT are approached. Think on the order of creating an internet for heathcare information. That will take an enormous investment of capital. And policies to force it to happen.

ARRA is a good thing for healthcare. Here's how it works. It effectively sets standard directions for different technologies that you should be moving towards. All of which are greatly beneficial to patient care. Over the next several years, if you move towards those goals, you'll be able to apply for the stimulus. So the sooner you move, the more stimulus you can receive. After a certain period, those directions you were supposed to be heading become standards. And if you don't comply, then you'll be penalized in the form of medicare/medicaid reimbursements (for the layman, this is many hospital's financial lifeline). It rewards those that move forward quickly, and penalizes those that don't comply. For our hospital, it will enable us to move in these directions (which we alreadly knew we were heading) many years ahead of when we would have been able to.

Keep in mind that only about 10% of primary care providers have fully electronic records. And the reason why is that it's freaking expensive.

I'll end my post with this. While you may think the healthcare industry is swimming in money, please remember where the money ends up. We don't enjoy charging you $50 per titanium screw we put in your leg, but that's what the manufacturer charges us. And that $500 radioactive shot that you just got to find cancer cells really cost us 500 bucks. And by the way, we're lucky if 50% of patients pay their bill. And when a family comes across the border to have their child born here, only to return back and never pay the bill, the drug companies are not the ones to pay it. The PCPs and hospitals don't have giant coffers of money to invest in greatly advancing healthcare IT on their own. Many of us are lucky to stay above water. If you want electronic records and computerized physician order entry and bedside medication verification, you are going to have to pay for it.
 
SpaceHonkey said:
If you want electronic records and computerized physician order entry and bedside medication verification, you are going to have to pay for it.
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Or maybe non-profit hospitals can make do with what they have, and for-profit hospitals can invest their profits in upgrading when it makes sense.
 
JCDenton said:
Or maybe non-profit hospitals can make do with what they have, and for-profit hospitals can invest their profits in upgrading when it makes sense.
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this. i thik we are bent over backwards getting ripped a new one way too much as is. well i know so.

don't forget all the doctors that make triple 6 figures or more
 
I'm not accusing the doctors who went to school for 7 years, and work 16 hour shifts daily. They are doing something productive, they trying to make life better for others. And their malpractice insurance is through the roof too. This isn't a garbage man job, it takes precision and know-how. Nothing against garbage men, they do a service to the city too. I direct my criticism elsewhere: To the people who do nothing but make the problem worse, while they collect a large amount of the money.
 
I acctually work in this field and really hope the money comes through. I have nurses and doctors running on 10 year old Pentium 3, 128mb machines, and they constatly complain, but we just dont have the budget to be on a 4 year refresh so we are on the 7-8 year "buy as you can refresh". And to make matters worse we may not even buy any replacement PCs this year because of the bad economy.
I'm not sure we would even get any of these funds as we already have a EMR, telemedice, digital x-rays, etc up and running, what we need are basic PC and network upgrades!

Unless this money is going to be a re-occuring fund, its fairly pointless as in 4 years who's going to upgrade all this?
 
OhSoCheesy said:
I think you are right Terry. I bet this thread explodes. I'll be very interested to find out how many people are in favor of bigger government at this point. With the amount of money this country owes now, adding another entitlement might push us over the edge.

Alright I'm ready for the flame war...
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More likely:

People who actually work and have knowledge of the health care industry will welcome this news and people with no clue but jump at any chance to cry 'big government' will call it waste.
 
thunderstruck! said:
More likely:

People who actually work and have knowledge of the health care industry will welcome this news and people with no clue but jump at any chance to cry 'big government' will call it waste.
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Yeah, of course people who work in the industry getting a handout will welcome it. Just like overpaid auto union workers were happy to have the government prop up the businesses they bled dry so that they could continue to be overpaid. That's not how a free society should work though. If it's a good idea to make an investment in IT, the smart hospitals will do it and flourish in the future, while the hospitals that didn't make the investment will have trouble competing. This is Chinese style industrial policy planning.
 
Lots of ignorance in this thread. The organization which defines creteria for security and interoperability for EMR is called CCHIT. Can anyone guess what city it's located in?
 
dook43 said:
Lots of ignorance in this thread. The organization which defines creteria for security and interoperability for EMR is called CCHIT. Can anyone guess what city it's located in?
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Smooth. Was not even aware of the Chicago thug politics payoff angle. HOAP AND CHANGE!
 
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