CBO director advocates government promotion of HIT, but warns against proposed physician bonuses

No question, there needs to be federal and state support of unified health information technology implementation. However, the Federal government should be in the business of incentivizing doctors and hospitals in this regard as opposed to asking them to underwrite the costs of these transitions in the current budget limited environment. Also, at the federal level, with input from the burgeoning e-health industry, guidelines on what HIT should encompass should be developed, as opposed to a federal HIT system, which will, like most government based endeavors, most likely be cumbersome, bureaucratic and slow to respond to the rapidly changing e-health market.  Let’s let our private sector do what it does best, with the role of the federal government limited to oversight, guidance and development with the health care leadership of strategies to make the HIT transition a smooth reality . . . jomaxx

“Federal intervention will be needed if the United States hopes to advance nationwide healthcare IT (HIT) adoption, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Peter Orszag.” On Thursday, while testifying before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, “Orszag said allowing the free market to evolve into using electronic health records will be too slow.” He added, “If the federal government chose to intervene directly to promote the use of health IT, it could do so by subsidizing that use, or by requiring it.” But, Orszag warned that “paying out bonuses for healthcare IT use would likely only reward the 10 percent or so of physicians who already use healthcare IT, and would be too costly to the federal government, with little progress achieved.”

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