E-reading isn’t just for books and newspapers. ReadWriteWeb and Gizmodo report that the Obama administration is offering to pay up to $44,000 as Medicare incentives or up to $63,750 as Medicaid incentives to any doctor who starts using drchrono, an electronic medical records app that has been certified for “meaningful use” by the Department of Health & Human Services.
The app began as a simple appointment reminder system for patients, but it has iterated steadily. It recently added support for billing through insurance providers, media integration for medical charts, speech-to-text transcription, and support for electronic prescriptions throughout the U.S. These features, combined with its clean, easy user interface, could significantly affect the way the health care industry operates.
Switching to paperless medical records could save $80 billion per year. Compared to that, the $19.2 billion the Obama administration is spending to push the program seems like a small start-up cost.
