Obama & The Uninsured
How do you feel about Barack Obama's plan to extend healthcare to uninsured patients and provide $10 billion over 5 years to fund HIT adoption?
Support it: Expected spending could positively impact hospitals' top-line growth. 40.26%
Oppose it: Provisions to tie payments for Medicare to performance can increase cost. 29.87%
Don't know yet, the plan may take years to unfold. 29.87%
Poll Comments:
11/14/08 — This is taxpayer money, and there has been little to no discussion with taxpayers on what this means or how the money will be spent and audited.
11/14/08 — If we are to improve healthcare, the solution is not to get the government more involved.
11/15/08 — It would benefit the healthcare community tremendously. The need to update healthcare technology is necessary because medical discoveries are being sought out daily. Improving the IS to communicate to other internal and external entities is something that must be done. The billions of dollars over the next 5 years is just a start. Unless healthcare cost could be contained, it will continually increase over the years and the technology to support it will also increase as well. This initial plan hopefully would begin to contain healthcare cost.
11/17/08 — The recent downspiral in the economy will certainly impact IT expansion in hospitals. Government support will be needed.
11/17/08 — A step in the right direction, but, absent an overall plan for health care reform, more than just some symptomatic relief is not likely.
11/17/08 — The most critical issue is making sure that every citizen of the U.S. has appropriate access to healthcare before we can even begin to address the HIT adoption issue. Redesign a healthcare system that includes prevention, appropriate and timely payment to health care providers to ALL U.S. citizens. The HIT issue can be integrated into this new and better healthcare in the U.S.
The Budget Crunch
A significant impact. 55.00%
Somewhat of an impact. 45.00%
None at all. 0.00%
Poll Comments:
10/28/08 — It may actually increase my budget to fund a wave of improvement initiatives. The issue I see is availability of capital for investment — given the current banking climate.
10/29/08 — With the downturn, we need to work even harder in supplying IT type tools/process changes to help reduce costs.
Hospital Pain Points
Experts say the economic downturn will significantly impact hospitals. What aspect of this concerns you most in regard to IT?
Having to stretch current IT staff to meet expanding needs. 44.44%
Less funding available for IT implementations. 25.00%
Having to cut staff positions. 22.22%
Other. 5.56%
Vendors requiring more money up front for products/services. 2.78%
Poll comments:
10/31/08 — As a public facility, we may not get the funding we need from voters.
10/31/08 — Continued progress in implementing electronic medical records and the planning and conversion to ICD-10 are extremely important projects, and will require increased IT resources that may not be available.
11/1/08 — Vendor consolidation and failure will be disruptive.
11/6/08 — Stretching current staff to meet expanding needs is a worrying trend hospital wide. By expecting fewer people to do more work, are we transferring the associated increased risk of business to our patients and staff?
11/6/08 — They'll be afraid of default loans.
