SPOTLIGHT: Time to boost health IT adoption

Can effective health IT use lower healthcare premiums? Not until more physicians and hospitals pick up the ball, one expert suggests. Right now, less than 15 percent of U.S. physicians have fully-automated practices, and less than 15 percent of U.S. hospitals have deployed CPOE, says Stephen Lieber, president and CEO of HIMSS, who spoke at a conference in the Midwest recently. The problem is that building up health IT infrastructure, especially high-profile EMR systems, is extremely costly and doesn't seem to produce much short-term ROI, health system CEOs say. Article