During the presidential campaign, one of the key focus of president Obama is to invest in healthcare IT in order lower the cost and provide better care. In essence, there were talks regarding a “affordable, accessible health care coverage for every American.” One way in which he plans on achieving the healthcare reform is through investment in healthcare technology.
From Obama’s website change.gov, he is planning on investment 10 billion a year for the next 5 years in hope to gain a wide adoption of healthcare technology that includes electronic Health records (ehr).
How much is 10 billion a year for 5 years? Let’s do some analysis.
According to AHA’s Hospital Statistics there are approxmiately 6000 hospitals in US not counting clinics.
if the fund is distributed directly to each hospital:
$10 billion / 6000 hospitals = $1,666,666.67
This does seem like an aweful lot of money. However, if we look at the way enterprise software is structured for the past 10 years, 1.7 million is no where close enough to cover the cost of hardware, software, the cost of an IT team and training. This is not considering the fact that currently there are not enough qualified IT professional to support Obama’s ambitious plan.