Report Finds More Flaws in Digitizing Patient Files

NY Times  By REED ABELSON and JULIE CRESWELLJAN. 8, 2014   Although the federal government is spending more than $22 billion to encourage hospitals and doctors to adopt electronic health records, it has failed to put safeguards in place to prevent the technology from being used for inflating costs and overbilling, according to a new report by a federal oversight agency.

The report, released on Wednesday by the Office of the Inspector General for the Health and Human Services Department, is the second in two months to warn about flaws in the oversight of the ambitious federal program aimed at converting patient records from paper to electronic. It comes as the Obama administration continues to face broad criticism over the troubled rollout of its health care law — especially the HealthCare.gov site.  Read more