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Electronic Health Database May Cost $200 Billion

Posted on: Tuesday, 2 August 2005, 15:00 CDT

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's proposal to create a national network of electronic health records could cost more than $200 billion initially to build and operate, researchers said Monday.

The health care industry itself, based on current estimates, will cover less than 20 percent of that amount.

"These findings suggest that policy initiatives are needed if we are to close this gap," said a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The government doesn't necessarily have to come up with the difference, the researchers said.

"I don't see them as having to foot the bill," said the lead author, Dr. Rainu Kaushal. "They can create the incentives. Then the private sector can run with it."

For example, the federal government could increase reimbursements for doctors who use electronic record keeping for their Medicare and Medicaid patients. That could prompt smaller physician groups to make the sizable investment that is often required for computer systems.

In recent years, many in the health care industry have already made the transition from record keeping systems based on paper files to ones based on computers. Experts say the new electronic systems save lives and money.

Members of Congress and the Bush administration, urged on by the health care sector, want to hasten that transition. So researchers tried to project how much it would cost. Their work was jointly funded by the Commonwealth Fund and the Harvard Interfaculty Program for Health Systems Improvement.

The researchers estimated that it would cost $156 billion to build the system and $48 billion annually to run it.

"We know it's expensive," said Dr. David Brailer, appointed by Bush to coordinate the government's efforts for improved health information technology.

Source: Columbian

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