Envelope Please?

Back in 2009, when President Obama signed the Recovery Act that contained a number of healthcare provisions, including the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), we all heard naysers say “this wouldn’t reduce the cost of health care,” “only a few, or better yet, the well endowed practices could implement EHR before the deadline,” and ”this would reduce the number of practicing physicians because of the demanding requirements and surrounding meaningful use.” Well it’s been a little over 3 years, and by all measures HITECH has exceeded expectations.

Ezekiel Emanuel in a Reuters article, An unsung victory in healthcare, reported:

It’s now been a year since the administration released the regulations specifying meaningful use and what it takes to be certified — the nuts and bolts of implementing the law. The results have been nothing short of spectacular.

As of December 2011, the use of EHR among office-based physicians has nearly doubled to 34 percent with e-prescribing exceeding 40 percent. Over 41,000 physicians have received more than $575 million in incentive payments. Going electronic will allow physicians to more closely track patients, especially the chronically ill, enabling the seamless exchange of data across multiple physicians, hospitals and other providers.

The story is much the same among hospitals: 35 percent have adopted EHRs, and nearly 2,000 of the 4,700 hospitals have, collectively, received more than $2 billion in incentive payments. Every month has surpassed the previous month as measured by the number of physicians and hospitals that have signed up with the government for the EHR program, suggesting that these numbers will continue to rise.

Another great byproduct of the law is that the entire healthcare IT industry has been refocused away from developing new, improved ways for physicians and hospitals to code and bill the insurance industry and the government for payment. Instead, they now focus on making electronics work to improve care, enhance coordination among physicians and facilitate physician-patient communication.

HITECH has presented an myriad of IT opportunities, i.e. data warehousing, business intelligence, EHR implementations, etc. so this is great news for those of us in the IT industry. However, it’s even better news for those of us who will be patients because improving patient care while controlling costs is the corner stone imperative for implementing EHR.