The Impact of the 2016 Election on Healthcare IT

Today it’s pretty obvious that the Presidential is on everyone’s mind. While I don’t plan to discuss the details of the election and the specific results, it’s worth thinking about what Donald Trump in the white house will mean for healthcare IT. Let’s start off with the easy one: Meaningful Use/MACRA. One doctor tweeted me that now that Trump is President, MACRA will be gone. I don’t think that’s further from the truth. In fact, I really can’t imagine any scenario where the EHR Incentive program (Meaningful Use, which still applies to hospitals and Medicaid) and the MACRA program would be gone. I think they’re here to stay and won’t be altered at all by this election. The biggest reason for this belief is that Trump is going to have so many other things on the agenda. Not the least of which is ACA (Obamacare), which we’ll get to later in this post, but also a whole suite of other things that he’ll make a priority. Why would Trump want to take on a relatively bipartisan thing like healthcare IT, EHR and MACRA? I don’t think he’ll waste a second on the subject. Plus, even if Trump wanted to go after the MACRA and EHR incentive legislation, I can’t imagine the Senate and House passing something to replace those programs either. Remember that Trump can propose all he wants, but the Senate and House have to pass it too and both of those groups seem to be firmly behind both efforts. Add this ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: ARRA EHR EHR Stimulus Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT MACRA Meaningful Use ACA Affordable Care Act Donald Trump HITECH Obamacare Source Type: blogs