Federal Health Care IT Spending Set to Grow

Angela Petty | The Washington Post | January 8, 2012

With money tight, congressional appropriators rarely insist that agencies spend money. Yet the omnibus spending bill passed Dec. 17 approved $100 million for a joint Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs effort to develop digital medical records — even though they missed deadlines for requesting the money.

A recent Deltek report projects that the federal health care information technology market will grow from $4.5 billion in 2011 to $6.5 billion by 2016, far surpassing overall federal IT growth estimates. Rising health care costs, the aging population and anticipated cost reductions and efficiency gains promise to make health care IT one of only a few bright spots in federal spending over the next few years.

Contractors should find opportunity at multiple agencies. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for instance, is seeking to modernize its infrastructure to make payments to providers nationwide more efficient, to increase program integrity and to reduce waste, fraud and abuse...