Health IT Orthodoxy after the Supreme Court

...The focus of ACA attention will turn to results or repeal. And while a different decision could have had ACA become a weight on HITECH and health information technology (HIT), the principally bi-partisan nature of the HIT agenda should now refocus attention almost exclusively on results for it.

It is from this latter perspective, though, that there may still be HIT tumult to come. HITECH was constructed from a health IT orthodoxy (set of tightly-held, common beliefs) that has shown a few cracks of late. And some of these cracks have to do directly with the population health IT needs of health reform from a program (HITECH) that is principally built around individual patient transaction technology.

Specifically, cracks have developed in the view, which HITECH shares, of EHRs as the center of the HIT universe. EHRs, and not other aspects of HIT, are the overwhelming focus of the incentive funds. The Meaningful Use criteria, tied to those funds, look at almost everything through an EHR lens. Either as cause or effect, criteria and leverage are pinned to EHR certification...