EPIC Costs

We may not need an economic stimulus package for Healthcare IT, one seems to have already started in Wisconsin:

1. Kaiser - took out a full page ad in USA Today last month bragging about the $4 Billion (yes, b as in "bankrupt") they have spent on Epic's EMR so far. The original budget was about $1.8B per new reports several years ago. Â Keep in mind Kaiser represents over 200 hospitals, so that's "only" about $20M per hospital... 2. Sutter announced they were acquiring Epic for 5 of their largest facilities (like CPMC and Santa Rosa Medical Cetner, which were running legacy mainframe systems). First quote of costs was about $150M, most recent pegs it at $500M... 3. Sentara announced they were budgeting over $200M for their half-dozen Virginia hospitals. Bert Reese is an extremely sharp CIO, so I trust his numbers implicitly: this really is what it will cost. 4. NYU recently announced a cost of $180B for Epic in ambulatory setting only... Add them up, and we've got quite an economic stimulus package going in healthcare IT already. What else can the government do? Maybe appoint Judy to one of their committees to dream up ways to spend even more!? Or, wake up the other HIS vendors like McKesson, Cerner, Siemens, et al, to start ramping up their prices (if they can fit so many zeros in their price books).