“As if we didn’t know already, most of the leadership of Health and Human Services has now weighed in on the importance of health information technology (HIT) in realizing goals for health care improvement and reform. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a House Ways and means Committee hearing on May 6th that “health IT is critical to health reform”. To her credit, she also said that “just shifting our paperwork to computers won’t work, unless we make sure they can talk to each other.” We also know that substantial amounts of money will be available through the ARRA and other sources for acquisition of electronic heath care records systems (EHR) as well as incentives to Medicare and Medicaid providers for meaningful use of such systems. Those of us who have worked in HIT, for even short amounts of time, realize that there is a step missing in this progression: acquisition,—–, meaningful use. That missing step is the adoption of technology, and adoption is considerably more difficult than either of these other steps.”
Article
David Hartzband, The Health Care Blog, 8 June 2009
