Federal Deadline Hobbling eHealth IT Rollout

Lucas123 writes "A federal deadline that begins next year and requires hospitals to prove they're meaningfully using electronic health records will lead to technical problems and data errors affecting patient care, say politicians and top IT professionals responsible for the deployments. Physicians and hospitals have until the end of 2011 to receive the maximum federal incentive monies to deploy the technology. If not deployed by 2015, they face penalties through cuts in Medicare reimbursements. 'I think we have nontechnology people making decisions about technology,' said Gregg Veltri, CIO at Denver Health. 'I wonder if anybody understands the reality of IT systems and how complex they are, especially when they're integrated together. You're going to sacrifice quality if you increase the speed [of the rollout].'"

Comments

Re:Fast, Good, Cheap, pick 2...

[Da_Biz]

We're talking about the US Federal Government here. In particular, the CMMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Security). You get all three.

"Ggovernment is bad" sock puppet, we're talking about private-sector insurance here. CMMS has a fraction of the administrative costs of the private sector. I've worked at private insurance companies: the business processes and technology is frequently appalling.

Stop chanting the "privatization is good" mantra--some of those who grew up in the Reagan era (such as myself) and were diehard conservatives (such as myself) understand that sometimes, private industry is NOT the answer.

On the flip side

[Dynedain]

On the other hand, look at the digital TV transition debacle.

If you don't set a deadline and enforce it, difficult technology implementations tend to drag on forever.

Re:Fast, Good, Cheap, pick 2...

[NecroPuppy]

Because it's the private sector receiving that money to build an infrastructure that meets the government requirements.

Or to put it more simply:

* Government give money to hospital.
* Hospital supposed to use money to build computing infrastruture that makes medical records / insurance easier to process.
* Hospital say "five year deadline too fast; we too stupid/bureaucratic to build infrastructure. We need more time so that money can be hidden / wasted / embezzled."