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Economic Stimulus: Government CIOs Have a Role in Health IT Stimulus Spending (Opinion)

June 29, 2009 By Tod Newcombe, Editor

I live in Massachusetts, where 97 percent of citizens have health-care coverage thanks to a 2006 law that mandates every resident have insurance through a unique public-private initiative. The first part of the law was to get as many people covered as fast as possible, and everybody agrees the results have been wildly successful.

That was the easy part. Now Massachusetts is working to rein in health-care costs. A key part of the state's plan calls for increased use of electronic health records (EHRs). In fact, the state passed a law last year requiring hospitals and health-care clinics to use EHRs and created a fund to help physicians put IT into their practices.

Massachusetts also began building an interoperable statewide EHR network that will let doctors, hospitals and insurance providers share information electronically. The investment will save money and lives by reducing medical errors.

States are sometimes called "laboratories of democracy," and in this case, Massachusetts is the test tube everybody is watching because no state has gone this far to insure so much of its population and require such a massive shift to EHRs.

Fortunately the rest of the public sector isn't waiting to see what happens in New England. Several key federal agencies that provide insurance to their workers and clients are adopting EHRs, as have some publicly financed health-care facilities. The economic stimulus package is about to pour $20 billion into programs similar to Massachusetts'. The infusion of funds will thrust the public sector into a much more active health-IT role.

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