Congress Approves Obama Giving Health IT more than $US20 Billion.

Well what can one say? The House and the Senate have decided and Health IT has become a national priority in the US. Of the $800 Billion in the package that is 2.5% of the whole plan.

The bills are ready for the President’s signature on Monday.

If Mr Rudd and Ms Roxon had a clue that would be $A1.05 B here on a proportional basis. That is more than enough to fund the first three years of implementation of the Deloittes National E-Health Strategy (with change!)

Details of the Health IT spend are found here:

Health IT funding spigot will open with stimulus bill

• By Nancy Ferris
• Feb 13, 2009

Congress was set today to pass a 1,071-page economic stimulus bill that includes more than $20 billion for health information technology and lays out new rules to protect the privacy of patients’ health information.

President Barack Obama has been urging Congress to act on the bill, and he is expected to sign it Feb. 16, if all goes as planned.

The bulk of the funding will go to Medicare and Medicaid providers — both individuals, such as doctors, and hospitals and other organizations — as substantial incentives to use e-medical records, beginning in 2011.The providers will be penalized if they do not adopt EMRs by 2014 or 2015.

The incentives are spelled out in technical language in a 63-page section of the bill. It appeared there had been few changes in the provisions that would give hospitals as much as $11 million and doctors between $44,000 and $64,000 for using e-medical records.

.....

Nearly one-tenth of the bill’s pages are devoted to health IT. Notable provisions include:

• Privacy rules under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 are strengthened, and their applicability is extended to more individuals and organizations that have access to patients’ health records.
• ONC is required to appoint a chief privacy officer to advise the national coordinator on privacy and security issues.
• New health IT policy and standards committees would be established as federal advisory committees.
• Although the bill sets a goal of having e-health records for every American by 2014, the bill specifies that patients are not required to have EHRs.
• Health care providers and insurers that contract with the federal government must use standards-compliant health IT systems and products.
• The National Institute of Standards and Technology would test health IT standards.
• Organizations and individuals that have patients’ health records would be required to report breaches of that data.
• Sales of health records would be restricted largely, making the data available to researchers and public health authorities but few others.
• In a controversial provision that persisted into the final bill, state attorneys general could sue individuals to enforce HIPAA privacy and security standards.

The full article is found here:

http://govhealthit.com/articles/2009/02/13/health-it-funding-stimulus-bill.aspx

There is a staggering amount of commentary and discussion on all this.

The best I can do is suggest you use the following link and browse until you get tired of it!

http://www.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=%22Health+IT%22+%22stimulus+package%22&btnG=Search+News

A slightly different set of articles is found using this:

http://www.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&nolr=1&q=%22e-Health%22+%22stimulus+package%22&btnG=Search

The range of views is really diverse –as is the pathetic scare campaign being run by a Republican rump.

What is quite interesting – and relevant in OZ – is the key role Health IT is seen as playing in the overall Obama health reform agenda. It gets most of the Health spend it would seem.

Obama team sees stimulus advancing health reform

By KEVIN FREKING –

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is using the economic stimulus package to show it has made serious progress on the president's health agenda, perhaps softening the blow if Congress fails to comprehensively address the issue this year.

In the legislation passed late Friday, Congress approved spending about $19 billion over the coming years on electronic health records and an additional $1.1 billion on research comparing which treatments work best for a particular disease.

Also, the bill sets aside about $1 billion for a "prevention and wellness fund." About $300 million of that money would provide additional immunizations. Most of the rest of that money will go to state and communities to help them tackle smoking, obesity and various preventable health problems.

"This represents the beginning steps of the president's health reform vision," said Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department. "It's designed to get relief to people who need it most and to do everything we can to bring down the cost of health care, and improve access and quality."

Some Republicans took exception to that vision on Friday. They focused their criticism on a new federal council that will coordinate what's called comparative-effectiveness research — when doctors and statisticians sift medical records to determine which treatments work best for a particular disease.

The government already spends hundreds of millions of dollars on such research. Democrats will greatly boost that spending, but they also establish a 15-member council whose members will annually report on the state of comparative effectiveness research and make recommendations.

Republican lawmakers claim the council will become a "government rationing board" that will make life-and-death decisions about which treatments doctors will be able to use.

"Congressional Democrats are using the cover of an economic crisis to advance an agenda that will destroy the doctor-patient relationship and set us on a course for government-administered health care," said Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., a doctor.

Drug makers and medical-device manufacturers are wary that the council would cut demand for some of their products if they are found not to be any more effective than cheaper alternatives. They fear any recommendation made could be used by Medicare to say it won't pay for a particular treatment, a decision that likely would be echoed by private insurers.

"The goal of this board is to conduct research that will allow the federal government to deny needed health care," said Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif.

More here:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5l6XyoVxqyli-VkTOiQHJJPyiCwD96B8LIG0

Well – we will have to wait and see what the NHHRC will recommend in June - given it likes the idea of Health IT but needs more time to figure out the detail!

David.