ehealth now

In the US, health care costs are becoming increasingly unsustainable. In 2008, the United States spent 2.4 trillion dollars on health care, or roughly 16.2 percent of GDP. This is far more than any other industrialized nation. In fact, no other OECD country was within 5 percentage points of the US in terms of total health expenditure as a percentage of GDP (OECD Health Data 2011). All signs point to this spending continuing to increase astronomically. In the last forty years, total medical spending has increased 79% more rapidly than CPI (Peters 2010, 270). At this rate of growth, by 2017, health spending will be approximately 20% of GDP—meaning 1 out of every 5 dollars in the US economy will be devoted to health spending (CMS NHE Data 2011). The US spends more gross dollars, a larger percent of GDP and more per capita GDP than any other industrialized nation on health care. Basically, health care costs in the United States are becoming increasingly unsustainable.
Many health economists have proposed various ways to bend the proverbial health cost curve. Health care costs are primarily driven by two main factors—price and usage. Since the price of health care is increasing at a similar rate in the US relative to other industrialized countries, the next most logical way to cut health care costs is to decrease usage. This would involve the difficult and controversial decision to ration care. However, these are not the only ways to lower health care costs. There are many who believe the implementation of health technologies can make the health care industry much more efficient, eliminate fraud, eradicate waste and decrease exorbitant health care costs. By implementing modern health technologies, many feel that the quality of health care can be improved while simultaneously lowering costs—something rare in any industry.
The health care industry has been slow to adopt the many computer technologies that have proliferated in almost every other industry. For example, while banks can instantly electronically alert us when our balance is low, doctors do not have the ability to instantly give us the results of a blood test. While most industries now use electronic record keeping, paper records continue to persist in healthcare. In the American Journal for Managed Care, Newt Gingrich asserts that these problems “have kept healthcare shackled to the past.” The HITECH Act, a provision of the stimulus bill, as well as the Affordable Care Act has put forth a lot of money to incentivize the healthcare industry to modernize and effectively employ these new technologies. Health ICTs and electronic records can help to eliminate medical errors due to coordination issues and unorganized paper records. This is one of the few ways that the US can hope to provide better quality healthcare at a lower cost without restricting access to care or eliminating expensive treatments. The federal government has already invested billions of dollars in health ICTs and e-health. The main drawback of making so much patient information electronic is the security and privacy issues. However, while this is always a concern, it is not a reason to forgo the overwhelming benefits of the wide-ranging implementation of health ICTs. The technologies can allow doctors to see patient data and medical records, see how other doctors are treating similar problems and see the exact cost of each treatment. Just as so many industries have realized the incredible benefits of integrating contemporary technology into their business model, it is time for the health care industry to catch up.