Looking Back: Top 10 Software Stories - Fed Stimulus - Rev 2

Fed Stimulus - Rev 2

Last January, President Obama was ushered into office with promises of tech-savvy installations and increasing visibility and transparency in government. To that end, the stimulus bill was expanded to include several technology initiatives affecting a variety of industries, including billions allocated for incentives related to electronic health records, moving the nation’s electricity grid to the Internet and deploying broadband across the nation. In addition, the administration established two publicly available websites, recovery.gov and data.gov, to track spending and federal agency data. The administration subsequently suffered a media firestorm after inaccuracies and data delays became public.  To counter criticism, just last week, the Obama administration unveiled the Open Government Directive that requires federal agencies to share public information on www.data.gov with set-in-stone timelines. The tech components of the federal stimulus bill are greatly affecting the healthcare industry, which tends to lag behind adoption trends. The caveat, however, is healthcare organizations make the investment, first, and then, in 2011 enjoy higher incentive payments on Medicare and Medicaid.  And, if organizations don’t move to EMR, penalties are coming down the pike in 2015. That spells good news and bigger budgets for VARs and vendors focused on the healthcare system through 2010.