Farmers have known for centuries that if you want to harvest wheat in October, you need to be planting in the spring. If one is otherwise preoccupied and doesn’t get around to it until August, the wheat doesn’t care. It won’t all of a sudden work extra hard to meet an October deadline. In effect, you’re stuck. Planning to late, the error is on the throw, not the catch.
House Bill 1, now working it’s way through congress has highly specific provisions for the promotion and adoption of Electronic Health Records. Included in this package (Sec. 3412) are direct subsidies to hospitals who implement qualified EHR’s for their facilities. According to the House version of the bill, these subsidies range from $2 million to about $6.37 million with payments beginning in 2011. This is where the harvesting story comes to play, it takes time to get these initiatives under way, and the time to start is now.
There are a great deal of challenges in rolling out an EHR, regardless of the size of the organization, still this train is leaving the station. No time to waste.
Thomas A. Coss
