Many in the health care IT and EMR world have been waiting to see the election results from last night. There’s been a reasonable fear about what impact the election results might have on the EMR stimulus money and other healthcare IT policies. The HIMSS blog described some of the details of the changes we saw last night:
The United States Senate has stayed in Democratic control, but with a much smaller majority. Senate Majority Leader Reid from Nevada survived a tough re-election, but is much weakened going forward. Senate Democrats will now have to look at whom they want to lead the Senate over the next two years. They will vote by secret ballot in the near future.
The United States House of Representatives will now be controlled by the Republicans when the 112th Congress convenes in January 2011. President Obama called the presumptive next Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner, last evening to congratulate him on his party’s victory and promise to work with him. With the House and Senate held by different parties, compromise will be even harder to find in the 112th Congress.
The current 111th Congress will reconvene in a few weeks to complete unfinished business before adjourning permanently either this month or next month.
I’m not so sure I agree that Reid has been weakened so much by the results of this election. He won and he’s seen as a guy who is great at strategy in Washington. So, I have a feeling that he’ll be back as Senate Majority leader again with just as much power. I say this as someone living in Nevada.
This part aside, I think the fact that the Republicans only took control of the house and not the senate likely is a good thing for the EMR stimulus. I heard one person tell me that the EMR stimulus money has pretty good bipartisan support in the government. I think this is generally true and that it will only be taken away if it’s a casualty of the unspent ARRA stimulus money and not because they specifically didn’t want to spend money on EMR.
I still think this is a possibility, but I personally believe it’s a small possibility. I don’t think the Senate will really allow that to happen. Instead they’ll focus on other things (possibly healthcare reform instead).
I’m interested to hear what other people think. What other effects will the election have on healthcare IT policy?
One good article of the pending new attack on health care reform more broadly is here:
http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2010/11/the-republican-landslide-and-the-affordable-care-act.html
As far as HIT goes, I don’t yet have a good feel for any prospective impact. Dr. Kibbe thinks the HIT push will be immune from any Republican meddling, but, I worry that the Meaningful Use reimbursement money could be at risk. The aggregate direct REC expenditure is a relative spit in the ocean (~2/3 of a billion dollars), and RECs will have to become largely self-sustaining by 2012 anyway or go out of business.
The $18.+ billion incentives to practices and smaller hospitals isn’t structured well … or big enough to effectively promote adoption of EHRs.
When practices and hospitals find out ‘regretably you just missed MU by a smidgen’ … their response across the board will be so strongly negative … as practices pull back from serving Medicare patients … that leaving the program in play has greater potential of adversely affecting Obama’s un-ACA than just about any other early component affecting a broad number of practices and the public.
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