I may have missed this somewhere else, but today was the first time I have found one of the major newspapers actually talk about EHR certification possibly being worse than what a competitive EHR marketplace can produce.

You can read the Wall Street Journal opinion article to see what I mean. Here’s the conclusion which describes the problem with certified EHR:

The stimulus hands the Obama Administration the power to define and approve “certified” records, therefore the power to create a health-tech monopoly. With stimulus money being shoveled out as quickly as possible, doctors and hospitals may end up prematurely investing in the costly systems that happen to have the government seal of approval — and in the process freezing out an innovative marketplace.

Granted, this was just in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, but I think more people need to stand up and make this opinion known. If you think we have problems now imagine what will happen when the government becomes the “arbiter of health information technology.”