Arm twisting by powerful health care lobbies stands a good chance of persuading the Obama administration to relax its ambitious timetable for digitizing the country's medical records.
Dr. David Brailer, a former national coordinator for health information technology, predicts that special interests "will probably" succeed in slowing down the switch from paper to electronic health records, according to The Boston Globe. The government has committed billions of dollars in incentive payments to doctors who adopt EHRs by 2015.
The American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association say the push for change is "too much, too soon," the Globe reported. The groups want the government to loosen qualifications and extend the deadline for receiving incentive funds to 2017.
The law allows for incentive payments of up to $44,000 to doctors and $2 million or more to hospitals.
John Pulley
John Pulley has written the Health IT Update blog since May 2011. Prior to becoming a regular contributor to Nextgov, he covered technology for Federal Computer Week and Government Health IT magazines. He has written about government for Federal Times and Air Force Times, as well. Pulley has worked in journalism for more than 20 years. He began his career covering local government for regional newspapers. In addition, he served as a writer and senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education for seven years. In 2006, he founded The Pulley Group, an editorial services agency.
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