The "Dark Side" of HITECH

The problem with HITECH is that there is a "dark side," which involves the powerful lobbying of the "enterprise" EHR vendors who are trying to capture market share at the expense of their smaller competitors and of their physician buyers. This force will lead to the following future scenarios:

• Higher prices for EMRs.

• The eventual mandated, not simply cooerced, HITECH "significant use" laws.

• The reigning in of physicians that see universal healthcare patients to force them to not only see the patients, but to work as secretaries trying to comply with the mountains of HIT electronic "paperwork" mandates in order to survive.

• Forget Medicare—it'll cease to exist after 2017.

• Forget going to only cash patients—only illegal immigrants will be "cash" patients in President Obama's universal healthcare plans.

• Forget HMO/PPO insured patients—these plans will not be able to exist against a massive government run taxpayer subsidized plan.

The EMRs that will reign are already being defined by who surrounds the president:

1. Allscripts (Glen Tullman)

2. Cerner (Nancy-Ann DeParle)

3. GE (David Blumenthal, MD)

4. Partners HealthCare System (John Glaser)

5. eCW (Thomas Frieden, MD)

The lay press is also beginning to see the light, as seen in these 2 recent Washington Post articles that are also looking into the underlying forces that have propelled HITECH to where it is now:

• "The Machinery Behind Health-Care Reform"

• "Group Seeks Sway Over E-Records System"

For more detail about these issues, read my PPT presentation "THE REAL FACTS ABOUT EMR," located here—http://msofficeemrproject.com/Page3.htm.

Al Borges, MD

"The HIT Realist"