A Penny for Your Health?
As we celebrate National Health IT Week this week it's interesting to put the United States healthcare IT consumption into a global perspective. As reported in AISHealth.com, the May/June issue of Health Affairs states that U.S. government is spending just a few cents on the dollar on healthcare IT when compared with other industrialized nations. America is about a dozen years behind most other industrialized nations in healthcare IT adoption. Citing a lack of studies that prove a correlation between cost reduction and HIT adoption, the study points out that simply because the U.S. trails in HIT spending, one can't conclude there is a direct relationship between its relative performance and its spending on care. Congress authorized $125 million for fiscal 2006 and $155 million for fiscal 2007 for healthcare IT. A RAND study puts the amount at $156 billion over a five-year period.
Tags: EMR, Healthcare+IT, Healthcare+PR, Online+PRPosted by Shawn Whalen on June 5, 2006 at 2:50 PM
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I think that there is always room for tighter regulations and standards within the healthcare environment, these necessary constaints within which companies must work.
What a shame the media took little interest in the awareness week. In the UK Healthcare IT has along way to go, perhaps initiative such as this replicated in UK or Internationalised will help the cause?
Posted by: Julie Dean | June 21, 2006 4:17 PM