[Ip-health] A Pound of Cure... Too bad the medical industry has a vested interest in inefficiency

[Joana Ramos]

 From Andy Kessler's blog, an article published  in the June 23, 2009
issue of Technology Review ( subscription required). Here are some
highlights.

Joana

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http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/2009/06/technology-review-a-pound-of-cure.html

July/August 2009
A Pound of Cure

The federal government is about to spend big on health-care IT. Too bad
the medical industry has a vested interest in inefficiency.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22852

The federal government is about to spend big on health-care IT. Too bad
the medical industry has a vested interest in inefficiency.

Technology is once again being touted as a cure-all, this time for what
ails the American health-care industry. The Obama administration's $787
billion stimulus plan includes $19 billion for health-care IT spending
that provides incentives for doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic
health records. Starting in 2011, stimulus funds will provide additional
Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements for health-care providers using
such systems.

These federal funding programs assume that the critical hurdle to
widespread adoption of electronic medical records is cost. Indeed,
hospitals surveyed in a study published last year in the Journal of the
American Medical Association reported cost as the major barrier. Yet
compared with other businesses, the health-care industry has been
unmoved by the logic of lowering costs to increase profits. The truth is
that these folks could have digitized the whole industry ages
ago....................

<snip>

The reason lies neither with cost nor with inadequate technology.
Rather, the health-care industry's reluctance to digitize its records is
rooted in a desire to keep medicine's lucrative business model hidden.
Dangling $19 billion in front of a $2.4 trillion industry is not nearly
enough to get it to reveal the financial secrets that electronic health
records are likely to uncover--and upon which its huge profits depend.
In those medical records lie the ugly truth about the business of
medicine: sickness is profitable. The greater the number of treatments,
procedures, and hospital stays, the larger the profit. There is little
incentive for doctors and hospitals to identify or reduce wasteful
spending in medicine............


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Joana Ramos, MSW
Cancer Resources & Advocacy
Seattle WA USA
+1-206-229-2420
http://ramoslink.info/
www.bmtbasics.org
www.healthyskepticism.org