Health IT Bill being Drafted for Congress in Early 2009

Christiane Agee for Leaders in Healthcare – November 11, 2008

Healthcare has been a big topic in the 2008 political campaigns, and will continue to be a dominating topic on Capitol Hill for the next administration. According to one of her senior advisers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is looking to pass legislation that would require physicians nationwide to adopt health IT, and could include negative consequences to encourage providers to do so, CQ HealthBeat reports.

Recently, at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society public policy forum, Wendell Primus, a policy adviser to Pelosi, said congressional staffers are currently working on the measure. There is speculation that this legislation likely will incorporate facets of a House bill (HR 6898) introduced in September by House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chair Pete Stark (D-Calif.), which includes penalties for providers who do not adopt the technology, and another House bill (HR 6357) introduced by Energy and Commerce Committee Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) that does not include such penalties.

With these changes looming from the government, the need for expertise in the information technology sector of the healthcare industry will certainly grow. Bellevue University offers Bachelor of Science in Healthcare Management as an accelerated Degree Completion program, and the Master of Science in Management of Information Systems with a Healthcare Concentration.