The new “it” blog is all about IT
Welcome to “IT Everything,” Modern Healthcare's blog about healthcare information technology and the people who use and develop it.
Forty years in the making, the healthcare IT revolution is under way, catalyzed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus law, which added the key missing ingredient—money—to a federal healthcare IT promotional campaign. That campaign began in earnest in 2004 when President George W. Bush set a national goal of providing most Americans with an electronic medical record in a decade.
The first billions of an estimated $30 billion from the stimulus law have begun to flow. The money is going into funding for state and regional health information exchanges, workforce development as well as setting up a new, national HIT extension service, launching a national clearinghouse of IT best practices and creating a series of “beacon” communities of IT excellence.
The bulk of the funding, however, won't begin to flow until next year when the Medicare program starts to directly subsidize healthcare providers' acquisitions and “meaningful use” of electronic health-record systems.
I have been covering healthcare information technology for Modern Healthcare, our e-mail newsletter Health IT Strategist, and Modern Physician for 10 years. I have seen the crack in the dam holding back health IT adoption widen from a rivulet to today's impending flood.
“We are in the middle of one of the most extraordinary years in medical informatics that's ever been,” said William Bria, chief medical information officer at the Shriners Hospitals for Children, Tampa, Fla., and president of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems. Bria was talking about 2009.
Thus far, 2010 has been even more extraordinary. This blog will expand our coverage of these exciting times in healthcare IT.
