Blumenthal Says Doctors Will Embrace Change

As the Obama administration's National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Dr. David Blumenthal is guiding the deployment of up to $27 billion in federal stimulus money over 10 years to help health care professionals and organizations overcome the uneasiness that underpinned his own resistance to change at his hospital.

Dr Blumenthal has spent the last year refining Congress' blueprint to encourage doctors and hospitals to adopt EMRs. He says those who "get on board" will be paid more by Medicare and Medicaid, beginning in 2011. But in 2016 the subsidies disappear and those still using paper records risk sanctions, including reduced Medicare fees. Some critics say five years isn't enough time for health care professionals to achieve a government standard called "meaningful use." In late 2009, federal officials announced a preliminary definition of that standard, but it is still being refined. Nonetheless, it is expected to tie any increased Medicare or Medicaid payments to doctors or hospitals using EMRs to enhance delivery of care by ensuring that the systems have capabilities such as electronic prescribing that would warn against dangerous drug interactions and electronic access to information such as records of immunizations and mammograms that could also cut out unnecessary procedures. Proponents, including Blumenthal, say the health care system has dallied long enough on EMRs, and that having an electronic infrastructure for better system-wide information exchange is critical to achieving goals of medical care quality and cost-control.