MASSDEVICE ON CALL — The federal government’s health care IT spending is set to increase from $4.5 billion in 2011 to $6.5 billion by 2016, according to a research study by Deltek.
Amid budget cuts across the rest of the federal spectrum, the health IT market will grow largely due to rising health care costs, an aging population and high unemployment rates.
The increase in spending will largely focus on the transfer from paper to electronic health records, updating infrastructure modernization, creating new payment models and creating security measures to reduce fraud in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to the GovWinIQ report.
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"It is Deltek’s belief that implementation of health IT will ultimately lower healthcare costs and expenditures while at the same time, improving population health," Angie Petty told InformationWeek. "The federal government will continue to push health IT within its own agencies and to states, localities, and commercial providers."
The report found that overall federal health care costs will nearly double from $766 billion in 2011 to $1.4 trillion in 2020.
Researchers believe that investments in health IT could curb overall health care costs.
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