Researchers from Harvard University and the City University of New York have cautioned that the federal government's multibillion-dollar investments in health information technology might not be the boon their proponents claim.

In fact, replacing the racks of manila folders at doctors' offices across the country with electronic medical records might actually drive up the cost of health care without improving it.

The federal government has been an unabashed champion of health information technology as a way to better coordinate care, reduce duplicative testing and thereby trim excess health spending.

President Obama's 2009 economic stimulus bill included some $20 billion for new health information technology. He claims the investment will save about $80 billion a year, reduce lawsuits and cut down on the number of medical errors.

But the researchers' analysis of records from nearly 29,000 patient visits found that access to computerized imaging results - often through an electronic health record - "was associated with a 40 to 70 percent greater likelihood of an imaging test being ordered."

As the study, which was published in the March issue of Health Affairs, concluded, "electronic access does not decrease test ordering in the office setting and may even increase it."

The president's troops wasted no time attacking the skeptical researchers' assessment. Dr. Farzad Mostashari, the Obama administration's national coordinator for health information technology, criticized the study for saying "nothing about the impact of (electronic health records) on improving care."

But the good doctor ignores the fact that that money spent on health IT can't be spent on more direct clinical applications - and might even cause health care providers to scale back other medical services.

For instance, in January, the University of Mississippi Medical Center laid off 115 employees and decided not to fill another 90 positions to save $12 million annually.

Why? In part because the hospital must spend $80 million over the next five years to implement electronic records in order to comply with a federal mandate.

Some health IT systems that already have been put in place fail basic cost-benefit analyses.

Take the one implemented by George Washington University Hospital. It is saving the hospital a million bucks a year. But the up-front cost? Almost 300 times that.

Of course, health IT systems are not by definition wastes of money. The lead author of the Health Affairs study, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Danny McCormick, noted that he made the switch to electronic medical records in his own practice and can't imagine going back.

But as McCormick put it, the research findings should "prompt us perhaps to look elsewhere for answers to the cost crisis plaguing the U.S. health care system."

Even if President Obama's wildly optimistic projection that HIT could save $80 billion a year were true, the savings would amount to just 3 percent of the $2.6 trillion that America spends on health care each year. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it won't come close to solving our nation's health-cost crisis.

Of course, hospitals and doctors' offices should be free to adopt useful and cost-effective technological innovations. But government mandates that they do so distort incentives - and could end up doing more harm than good.

By trying to speed the adoption of HIT, the government might slow it down - and cost taxpayers a lot of money in the process.

Source: http://heritage.com/articles/2012/06/13/opinion/doc4fd8b90d50071427028444.txt?viewmode=2