Wall Street Journal: "ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle"

This WSJ Op-Ed could have been entitled "President Sucker:  Led Down the Garden Path by The Healthcare IT Industry."It is entitled "ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle", as below.  First, though:On Feb. 18, 2009 the WSJ published the following Letter to the Editor authored by me (http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123492035330205101):Digitizing Medical Records May Help, but It's ComplexDear WSJ:You observe that the true political goal is socialized medicine facilitated by health care information technology. You note that the public is being deceived, as the rules behind this takeover were stealthily inserted in the stimulus bill.I have a different view on who is deceiving whom. In fact, it is the government that has been deceived by the HIT industry and its pundits. Stated directly, the administration is deluded about the true difficulty of making large-scale health IT work. The beneficiaries will largely be the IT industry and IT management consultants.For £12.7 billion the U.K., which already has socialized medicine, still does not have a working national HIT system, but instead has a major IT quagmire, some of it caused by U.S. HIT vendors.HIT (with a few exceptions) is largely a disaster. I'm far more concerned about a mega-expensive IT misadventure than an IT-empowered takeover of medicine.The stimulus bill, to its credit, recognizes the need for research on improving HIT. However this is a tool to facilitate clinical care, not a cybernetic mir...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: AMA healthcare IT dangers healthcare IT distraction healthcare IT risk HITECH Jeffrey A. Singer MD Wall Street Journal Source Type: blogs