SUBTEXT At the Health 2.0 Goes to Washington Conference, June 07, 2010, Jon White, Health IT Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), gave a brief interview. He spoke about patient healthcare and how Health IT improves the quality of healthcare.
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Health IT has the potential to improve the quality of health care, but as is the case in any industry, poorly implemented IT with poor processes simply increases the amount of complexity without bringing much or any benefit. In order to implement IT successfully, those involved must assume an iterative model on top of some reasonably good initial plans. As a result, there are many ways that an IT plan can go off the rails making a guarantee of success rather optimistic.
I am not sure it is good to have the assumption that HIT helps improve the quality of healthcare. He said, “We fund research into how HIT can improve healthcare.” Should it not the goal be to find out WHERE HIT can improve healthcare and not that it automatically does? HIT does offer a lot of improvements and improve efficiencies but it is not always the best solution. Assuming that it is always true, can lead to gross inefficiencies.
Just because he says does not mean it is true. The data states exactly the opposite. Such propaganda is leading the nation’s health care budget to destruction.