CMS announced it will spend $34 million to have Northrop Grumman track health IT incentive payments. It seems as if the last several months millions of dollars have been pouring out of HHS. For those who are opposed to all this spending, this announcement may seem like the federal government is pouring more money into a bottomless pit.
In fact, we need to ensure that all this investment money, seed money, if you will, is making a lasting impact on the transformation of the healthcare industry. We need accountability. The government needs to show the taxpayers that it spent our money wisely and the return on investment is an efficient industry that delivers improved quality of care and better clinical outcomes. If the government can demonstrate this, we can put trust back into the system.
As they say, however, the devil is in the details. Who else was competing for the contract aside from Northrop Grumman? How will they develop the repository? Will the system just keep track of payments and be an accounting system? Or will the system collect granular data and be able to generate reports that show which meaningful criteria the healthcare provider met and the result of having met that particular criterion? Or is this another project or contract?
If this is another project, a quality tracking system, so to speak, it will be interesting to see how that contract is developed and who would be able to set up and maintain that system. It seems like a job for an entity that deals with healthcare quality. It would also require that organization to be able to hook up with whatever system Northrop Grumman develops.
Both types of systems, accounting and quality tracking, are equally important. The execution of these projects, of course, will determine how successful the government is in showing that investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the healthcare industry made it more efficient and delivered quality care.
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