In his weekly address on Saturday, Dec. 6, President-elect Barack Obama described details of an economic stimulus plan that his administration plans to pursue in the early days of his presidency. A highlighted feature of the plan was investment in electronic health records (EHRs) at hospitals and physician’s offices to modernize the nation’s healthcare system, provide jobs, and improve patient safety. The address came just days before release of a report by the National Alliance for Health Information Technology (NAHIT) showing that more than half of CFOs and finance VPs responding to the NAHIT survey plan to defer health IT equipment purchases or delay or lengthen timeframes for health IT initiative implementation because of current budgetary constraints. View President-elect Obama’s address.
President-elect Obama’s nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, Tom Daschle, has also announced that the transition team will host health care community discussions across the country over the holidays to help Daschle’s policy team put together their final recommendations for the new administration.
The health care community discussions, which will be organized via the transition’s web page, are modeled on the platform committee meetings that the Obama campaign held across the country earlier this summer.
Read the Daschle announcement.
