Premier urges economic stimulus funding for healthcare information technology

But also back then, a federal economic stimulus package plan approaching a trillion dollars seemed unfathomable. Not
today.

And this time around healthcare organizations, such as Premier Inc., proactively are calling for a noteworthy chunk of the billions to cover the development, adoption and implementation of information technology to improve quality, reduce errors and generate long-term efficiencies and savings in an industry historically bloated on wasteful practices and spending that some argue are regulatory inspired.

Premier specifically sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to include provisions for "federal standards development and [electronic health record] certification for seamless quality reporting" and "substantial funding for providers" because "high acquisition and implementation costs and lack of common interoperability standards have made substantial progress difficult," according to the letter. [Editor’s Note: Visit HPN Online to read a copy of the letter.]

In a brief telephone interview five days before the presidential inauguration, Healthcare Purchasing News Senior Editor Rick Dana Barlow spoke with Blair Childs, Premier Inc.’s senior vice president, public affairs, about his organization’s efforts to push for investment in healthcare information technology as a key provision within a healthcare economic stimulus package. 

I’d say it’s better than a 50 percent chance that there will be a significant funding boost for healthcare IT – a substantial boost for hospitals. We’re looking at $15 billion to $25 billion for healthcare IT overall. How that gets allocated still has to be decided. There’s a high probability it will be included in the overall stimulus package. The issue is how quickly that money will be released. Are we ready to pay for IT if we don’t have standards for IT interoperability? Everyone wants to make sure that it’s accountable.

We’re hoping for it. I think there’s a sentiment on the Hill that that money shouldn’t be released until standards are adopted – interoperability and data standards. So it may not be for a couple of years. Certainly, GS1 is one set of standards but that doesn’t fit in with EHR. There’s a lot of debate in Washington about EHR.

As much as I think they’re leaders we’re very focused on the people making the decisions right now. They are commentators but not decision makers. We need to reach those who are going to be doing healthcare IT work.

I don’t see anything on the horizon about GPOs at all. I would say that members of Congress I talk to – Republicans and Democrats alike – recognize the critical role that GPOs play in the industry and they’re very supportive. We’re in an environment where cost reduction is critical, and GPOs are effective mechanisms to reduce costs and inefficiencies. We also feel that a lot of the concerns Sen. Kohl raised have been addressed.

That’s a really good question. I can’t give you a number. In conversations I’ve had with some very influential organizations, from Geisinger to Aurora, almost all are heavily invested in this area. In addition, Premier has the largest clinical database in the country for hospitals to use to benchmark with one another. So I can’t give you an exact percentage of members in the process of fully integrated EMR, but I know that we have a large number of members who are far enough along to transmit information between hospitals and physicians and so forth.