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Note: Latest RAND report suggests we might be throwing taxpayer dollars away on EHRs and other healthcare IT systems.
7 Big Data Solutions Try To Reshape Healthcare (click image for larger view and for slideshow)The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has done an outstanding job of promoting EHR technology through Meaningful Use financial incentives, and it has fostered a spirit of cooperation among IT stakeholders. But ONC sometimes sounds more like a cheerleader than an objective observer on the extent to which modern informatics can transform healthcare.
The jury's still out. A RAND Corporation report in 2005 predicted that the efficiency and safety improvements made possible with health IT could save the U.S. healthcare system $81 billion a year. Since 2005, however, annual health spending has soared from $2 trillion to $2.8 trillion, and quality and efficiency have improved only marginally, despite an increase in health IT adoption, according to researchers Arthur L. Kellerman and Spencer S. Jones in a newly released RAND study published in Health Affairs.
Kellerman, chair of policy analysis...