Director of the Congressional Budget Office Peter R. Orzag testified about the overuse, underuse and misuse of health care before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.  One of Orzag's key points of focus was expanding the use of Health Information Technology by tying Medicare reimbursements to adoption of Healthcare IT.

Orzag maintains a Director's blog at the Congressional Budget Office website, where he posted his list of the key points he aimed to make in his remarks.  His health information technology overview:

Expanded use of health information technology (IT) and electronic medical records has the potential to improve the quality and efficiency of the care that patients receive, but realizing that potential would require broader changes in the health care system (including, especially, changes in the financial incentives for doctors).

Even so, Orzag's explained in his testimony that adoption of Healthcare IT alone will not result in significant money saving:

The bottom line is that research does indicate that, in certain settings, health IT appears to facilitate reductions in health spending if other steps in the broader health care system are also taken to alter incentives to promote savings. By itself, however, the adoption of more health IT is generally not sufficient to produce significant cost savings.

The webcast of Orzag's testimony "The Overuse, Underuse and Misuse of Healthcare"can be viewed here.  A pdf is available here.


Source: Congressional Budget Office.