Tag Archives: Documentary

How do federal health
bureaucrats know that the $35 billion health information technology
program has been a success? Because it’s spent a lot of money
already—almost $9 billion.
As a
new report on the Health Information Technology and Economic
and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which was passed as part of the
2009 stimulus, notes, senior Medicare officials seem rather focused
on the total volume of money spent as a measure of success.
The HITECH act provides incentive payments to health providers
who adopt and install electronic health records systems. But the
primary goal seems to be to get those payments out the door as
quickly as possible.
The new report, issued by a group of Republican senators, notes
that the program lacks a meaningful check on those who apply for
the incentive payments. Providers simply self-report that they have
met the necessary criteria—no documentary evidence necessary. The
report suggests that “this would be like an individual claiming to
have won the lottery but not being required to produce the winning
lottery ticket in order to collect the payout.”
Medicare’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has warned that
this is a potential problem. The OIG issued a report
last year saying that Medicare “does not verify the accuracy” of
the self-reported information by health providers claiming the
incentives prior to payment—and even noted a few examples of
providers who had reported themselves eligible, but had not
actually met the requirements.
Yet officials at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS) did not agree with the OIG report’s conclusion that
additional checks prior to payment would be necessary. Why? Because
it could delay the program’s payments.
Never mind, in other words, whether the money is going to the
right people, or being spent effectively. The important thing is
that the money is being spent.
Indeed, officials in charge of that program have been explicit
about that attitude. ;

As the new GOP report notes, a senior Medicare official in
charge of the health IT program has openly touted its success by
pointing to the successful doling out of payments: “In the opening
session of the 2012 Office of the National Coordinator for Health
IT Annual Meeting, Farzad Moshashari, National Coordinator for
Health IT, highlighted how much money has been spent and suggested
it was the measure of success of the EHR program. He recognized the
CMS staff who have helped facilitate the “$9 billion” that has been
provided to states that ‘had the highest proportion of eligible
[providers] paid.’”
Meanwhile, even though providers are getting paid, the program
is failing to achieve one of its key goals: interoperability. It’s
not enough to merely incentivize health providers to install
electronic health records systems. For them to work the way the
incentive program’s boosters had hoped, they also need to be able
to easily communicate with each other. That’s
not happening. As a study by RAND noted earlier this year, “the
health IT systems that currently dominate the market are not
designed to talk to each other.” Instead, they’re designed to lock
providers into long-term relationships with vendors who maintain
expensive proprietary technology systems.
In the end, these health records systems, which were sold as a
way to reduce health costs in the long run by facilitating better
record keeping and transfer, may end up costing taxpayers money.
That’s because they make it easier for providers to bill more to
Medicare, by
assisting them with Medicare’s complex billing procedures. … Read More