U.S. Health Dept. Will Offer Some Doctors Cash To Use E-Health Records

Source: Information Week

The pilot program aims to entice more doctors, especially those in small to medium sized practices, to use digitized health records.
October 30, 2007 03:00 PM


U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services is launching a new 5-year demonstration program to financially reward physicians who use electronic health record systems in their practices.

The pilot program aims to entice more doctors, especially those in small to medium sized practices, to use digitized health records, and in the bigger picture drive the U.S. closer to meeting a goal that President Bush set three years ago for most Americans to have interoperable health records by 2014.

The new program is "a very important milestone a pathway to a system of health care to provide better quality of care at lower costs for all Americans," said U.S. health secretary Micheal Leavitt during a teleconference on Tuesday to announce the program.

Only about 10% of U.S. doctor practices -- and only 5% of those in solo practices -- are using E-health record systems.



Read more: http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202800338

he has too much info about his patients personal lives in their charts and won't put that on a computer database.

Sadly, physician behavior in the US is almost perfectly correlated with effect on income. Docs see electronic medical records as adding extra time to visits, so they want to be reimbursed. If we could get all docs onto a nationwide system, it will save a lot of time and money. Until that happy time, docs will need to be paid.

The UK and the VA have fully-electronic medical records because they can order docs to do it.

Pretty poorly according to GAO and news reports.

I know some VA docs who rave about how great it is - it saves time and enhances patient care. Do you have links to the contrary?

The VA used to provide the worst health care in the US. Now it's the best - they've done a great job.

You want to see second opinions without any patient-doctor visits. This is the way to do it.

one of them is having problems transitioning because it is taking a long time to get familar with the program. She told me they had to go to it. My dentist even has a medical program which he can send and share with other dentists. Good thing I'm retired now on disablilty because my records apparently can be read by whomeever.