Health IT in Health Reform

But it is not enough to merely pay doctors to use EHRs. The two counterexamples to systemic failure in health IT are Kaiser Permanente and the VA. The key word here is “systemic,” because many other, smaller organizations have succeeded with health IT deployments but they are not comprehensive systems of healthcare. The VA and Kaiser are systems with large numbers of both clinics and hospitals that use advanced health IT systems to effectively coordinate care between locations. Two commonalities between these systems should be mentioned at the outset of any intelligent discussion of perils and potential of health IT.