Bloated Healthcare Costs Raise EHR Concerns

By all accounts, money is being made in the healthcare industry off of EHR adoption. But who’s really saving cash and benefiting from these systems? There has been plenty of talk about Medicare and Medicaid fraud over the past few days, as the Attorney General of the Department of Justice (DoJ) and Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) recently issued a billing fraud warning.

However, it’s also important to take a broad view of where the healthcare IT industry is now and where it’s going. Friday’s New York Times report brought forward the top-heavy nature of a system in which doctors have billed Medicare for EHR and the highest levels of treatment possible. The article said that a mere 1,700 of the more than 440,000 doctors in the country cost Medicare as much as $100 million in 2010...