Scariest Health IT Regulation – Healthcare IT Superlatives

I thought it would be fun to look at a bunch of Healthcare IT Superlatives (best, scariest, cutest, smartest, funniest, etc etc etc). I imagine this will be a series of blog posts that never stops. If you’d like to see me write about a specific healthcare IT superlative, let me know in the comments or on my Contact Us page. I always like to cater to readers. Then, I at least no one person will find the post useful. Although, if one person finds it useful, it’s very likely that thousands of others are interested as well.

The first Healthcare IT Superlative we’ll consider is: Scariest Health IT Regulation

This is a challenging topic since healthcare is so burdened by regulation. I’m going to use a pretty broad interpretation of what I’d consider a healthcare IT regulation, but I’ll admit that I’m not as familiar with the medical device or pharma industry regulation. If you have experience in either of those, I’d love to hear what regulations in those industries is the scariest regulation.

When I think about all the various healthcare IT regulations, I have to narrow the scope down to the regulations that have the most over arching reach. That basically leaves me with ACO/Value Based Reimbursement, Meaningful Use, and HIPAA. Certainly there are plenty more that could be listed, but it’s not as scary for me if they aren’t large regulations that impact the majority of the healthcare system.

Of all of these, I’m most scared of ACO/Value Based Reimbursement. The worst part of any regulation is ambiguity. ACO and value based reimbursement is so vague right now that I don’t think anyone know where it will really end up going. That’s really scary for me and is likely scary for most healthcare organizations. It’s really hard to plan for something that’s vague and ambiguous.

Furthermore, the move to value based reimbursement and ACOs is likely going to have the biggest economic impact on healthcare. This doesn’t mean that every doctor and healthcare organization is going to lose when it comes to value based reimbursement. Definitely not. There are going to be a bunch of winners and losers. Some will really benefit from ACOs and some will suffer. However, my gut tells me that there’s going to be more losers than winners. That’s pretty scary to consider with all the other challenging dynamics at plat in healthcare today.

There you have it. What healthcare regulations are scaring you the most? Which regulations keep you up at night? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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