Health Information Technology

Improving America’s health care industry is essential in order to control the rising cost, face the increasing demand with improved life-saving care, and mitigate the negative effects of physician shortages. National Health Expenditures (NHE) already account for 17% of U.S Gross Domestic Product and by 2020 it is expected to top 20% [CITL, 2009]. The “rising costs would be less of a concern if there were results. But Americans are not healthy” [FCC, 2010a, See p. 1.]. For example, 68% of adults are overweight or obese leading to medical complications [Ogden and Carroll, 2010] and the nation has 670,000 new cases of congestive heart failure each year, many of them fatal [CDC, 2008]. To reign in these costs and meet the growth in demand, the health care industry needs to couple 21st century medicine with 21st century communication technology. Broadband is not a panacea. Rather, implementing Information Technology in the health care industry, often called Health Information Technology (HIT), offers the potential to improve the quality of care while reducing costs and extending the reach of the limited pool of physicians [FCC, 2010a]. Furthermore, future innovations will certainly increase the applications of HIT systems. However, there exists several barriers to wide-spread adoption of HIT systems. It is essential that policy-makers remove these barriers in order to extract the potential benefits of HIT systems. The focus of this study is to analyze current and future opportunities for HIT in the US health care industry. In particular, implementing these systems into Florida’s health care industry to improve the states’ quality of care and reduce the escalating health care costs. Section 2 focuses on the current and future benefits of wide-spread HIT adoption. However, the reluctance to adopt HIT systems suggests that there exists barriers to wide-spread implementation. Section 3 uncovers the characteristics that are barriers to or facilitators of adoption. This section reveals two main issues: (1) physicians lack the incentive to adopt HIT systems and (2) large investment costs of implementation and management HIT systems. In particular, this is a major barrier in rural regions facing weak broadband infrastructures. Then, section 4 focuses on the initiatives for wide-spread HIT systems in Florida. Establishing a statewide robust broadband infrastructure is essential in order to construct Florida’s Health Information Network.