“Spurred by $34 billion in financial incentives from the U.S. stimulus package, healthcare organizations are racing to adopt information-technology products and services. Healthcare IT, or HIT, has been pitched as a panacea for improving patient care, reducing medical errors and increasing cost-saving efficiencies, and after 2015, instead of offering incentives, the government will penalize healthcare providers that don’t use it in a meaningful way.
Healthcare information technology holds great promise. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support systems can match diagnoses to symptoms, provide treatment guidelines for diagnoses, recommend drug dosages and alert doctors to adverse drug interactions. The power of telemedicine allows doctors to diagnose and monitor patients in real-time even if they are thousands of miles away. Healthcare IT also includes practice management and bill-paying software, clinical informatics and drug-discovery software.”
Article
Steve Hernandez, Risk & Insurance Online, 29 November 2010
