Overheard - What’s holding up electronic health records?

Nozmoking  |   Feb 17 2009   11:04PM GMT

Who’s kidding who? 75% of the economy is driven by consumer spending. “Centralizing” health records isn’t going to create any return on the $19 billion investment in the form of economic growth. Even if such an albatross created 100,000 new jobs that’s a cost of $190,000 per job; at current pay rates that means roughly an average of $140,000 per job is project overhead, not salary that consumers will spend. It’s no different than the rest of the rotten pork in the “stimulus” bill that will be paid for by new taxes and by printing insolvent currency. This garbage won’t stimulate the economy - it’ll just make a handful of the “upper echelon” richer and move the country in a socialistic direction.

JEngdahlJ  |   Feb 19 2009   5:13AM GMT

This HITECH Act — and $19 billion down-payment – is a grand first act toward establishing pervasive electronic health records throughout the U.S. Salting the mine with incentives for Medicare and Medicaid patients surely gets providers using HIT and building an EHR infrastructure (along with streamlining care for seniors and uninsured.)

But, will that Medicare/Medicaid dose be enough to change the system for everyone else, most especially those in their teens, 20’s and 30’s who will benefit most from wellness, preventive care, and complete medical records over their lifetimes? How will such efforts expand beyond rural areas and selected populations? Are we ready to start creating portable records for uninsured children, or are we going to let them slip through the cracks in our imperfect information environment? The goal of comprehensive care first requires comprehensive records. Learn more:  <a href="http://www.healthcaretownhall.com" title="http://www.healthcaretownhall. " target="_blank">www.healthcaretownhall.com</a>