Rewarding healthcare facilities and physicians with reimbursement incentives to convert records to an electronic system and go paperless might have gone by the wayside with Medicare reimbursement declines. So, other incentives may come into play….like “threats”. Adopt electronic medical records or lose your license to practice medicine. This is what Massachusetts is currently looking to do- making meaningful use EHRs a requirement for obtaining a medical license (or keeping one). So, today’s choice may not even be a choice in the future!
John Glaser, adviser to the Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology (ONC) states “We’re going to go through a hell of a lot of change in healthcare IT in a relatively short period of time. Some states will screw it up”. He feels that some information exchanges won’t work and that the road ahead will be bumpy.
