HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson called for his plan to fund hospital information technology with federal recoveries from health care fraud and abuse cases to be enacted this year, Modern Healthcare reports. Thompson said he wants to use half of the $1.2 billion in settlements collected annually to help hospitals implement standardized electronic medical records and invest in other IT.
Thompson, speaking at a Medicare conference in Washington, D.C., said he wants the IT plan, "done this year, before I leave" (Tieman, Modern Healthcare, 2/17).
Thompson said last month that adopting technologies such as computerized physician order entry, drug bar coding systems and EMRs could save the United States $100 billion per year through fewer deaths and disabilities caused by medical errors. According to Thompson, these technologies also could make it easier for public health officials to detect disease outbreaks and possible biological or chemical terrorism events (iHealthBeat, 1/28).