Inverse proportionality between the economic crisis and health IT: the new GI Bill

Economic gloom and doom? A huge deficit? Let's be cautious.
On the other hand, need to stimulate the economy and ready to throw huge bucks at the problem?
Where do you find a $19 billion dollar investment just waiting to happen?
Has health IT's time finally come? Many think it has. And it's about time. 

Well, let's think about it. If you're going to spend money to stimulate the economy, it has to be a worthy cause and one that can tolerate big investment. So far so good for health IT. And that's not all:
According to feature articles in the recent NEJM, we don't even know exactly how many hospitals are IT-equipped, despite the consensus that IT is critical to quality of care. It took around 10 scholars many hours to even agree on the definition of IT-equipped, and all of that to come down to a one digit response: 1,5% ! Or 3% if you include the VHA establishments.

Why do hospitals resist the IT change? Mostly financial reasons: lack of capital, lack of ROI calculations.

Amongst the solutions proposed by the Obama administration, "follow the money". Up to $44 k for those physicians who start implementing EMR's in 2010 and pursue it for the following years. Plus penalties for those who don't. And the same sort of bonus and penalty system for hospitals.

So Get Informatics, it's the new GI Bill!