From the article: "A team of RAND Corporation researchers projected in 2005 that rapid adoption
of health information technology (IT) could save the United States more than
$81 billion annually. Seven years later the empirical data on the
technology’s impact on health care efficiency and safety are mixed, and annual
health care expenditures in the United States have grown by $800 billion.
In our view, the disappointing performance of health IT to date can be largely
attributed to several factors: sluggish adoption of health IT systems, coupled
with the choice of systems that are neither interoperable nor easy to use; and
the failure of health care providers and institutions to reengineer care
processes to reap the full benefits of health IT. We believe that the original
promise of health IT can be met if the systems are redesigned to address these
flaws by creating more-standardized systems that are easier to use, are truly
interoperable, and afford patients more access to and control over their health
data. Providers must do their part by reengineering care processes to take full
advantage of efficiencies offered by health IT, in the context of redesigned
payment models that favor value over volume." Read more
