House tees up $20B investment in health IT

张琨

House tees up $20B investment in health IT

By Nancy Ferris
• Jan 15, 2009

Congress might commit to spending $20 billion on health information technology over the next few years.

That figure is in the economic recovery bill the House drafted and the Appropriations Committee released today. Committee action on the bill is expected next week.

“It’s exciting that our time has come,” said Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), a longtime advocate of health IT.

The bill would appropriate $2 billion for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in the Health and Human Services Department, “and $20 billion overall for health information technology to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients and introduce cost-saving efficiencies,” according to the committee report accompanying the draft.

There were reports at press time that at least some of the remaining $18 billion would be spent on health IT grants to states because the national coordinator’s office is too small to manage such a large program, some experts said.

Although the House is responsible for originating spending measures, the Senate is said to be drafting its own language for the health IT portion of the bill.

At two Capitol Hill meetings on health IT, one theme that emerged was the need to give doctors incentives for going beyond acquiring electronic health record systems and other forms of health IT to actually using them.

“Linking the implementation of [health IT] to health system reforms is essential,” Dr. Jack Cochran, executive director of the Permanente Federation, told a Senate committee. “To promote appropriate and clinically effective uses of [health IT] over the mere acquisition of technology, the secretary of HHS should develop and implement measures for [health IT] connectivity and data exchange, as well as measures for EHR-based quality reporting.”

At the same Senate hearing, Janet Corrigan, president and chief executive officer of the National Quality Forum, said health IT “investments and incentives should be tied to the effective use of [health IT] to improve patient safety, outcomes and experience of care” rather than linking them to simply having the technology.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who presided over the hearing, expressed concern that health IT could be “another technology boondoggle” like past IT failures in the federal government. “We can’t afford to go there again,” she said.

At a meeting sponsored by the Institute for e-Health Policy and others, Claudia Williams, director of health policy and public affairs at the Markle Foundation, said, “Health IT should achieve measurable health and delivery system improvements…. Health IT on its own will not result in desired outcomes.”