Our favorite politician Pete Stark has introduced legislation giving bonuses for physicians who transfer over to a federally-approved electronic record system. The total payment is $40,000 over five years per physician, with penalties for late adopters.
Considering it costs up to $30,000 for each physician to implement computerized records, this surprisingly seems like an appropriate sum of money.
Related posts:
- Pie in the sky and electronic records
- The low adoption rate of electronic records
- Poll: Will electronic medical records really save money?
- Most hospitals still use paper records, and why money alone won’t solve the electronic medical record problem
- The New York Times finally gets it on electronic medical records
- Op-ed: Why doctors still balk at electronic medical records
- How the widespread adoption of electronic medical records can raise health care costs
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A sucker’s deal: if the government provides a voucher for $40K, you can be sure that the price will rise to $80K.
I can’t imagine taking Fourtney Stark at his word.
It could hardly be worse than as at present with no incentive and only disincentive.
$40K is not a lot of money for these systems, especially if you are adding in hardware and device interfaces. And why should the cost go to 80K? If anything, the heat will be up on the manufacturers to deliver as much as possible for that money. You know, that competition thing.
So why does the Govt. find such interest in everyone being on EMRs? Something to think about.
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