[semperdark]

HIPAA, maybe. HITECH and Meaningful Use would be more relevant (2009 onwards).

It's been a while, but I remember thousands of pages of granular user-interface-level requirements (think 'display of telephone number icons') to quality for federal recognition as an electronic medical record system. Hospitals/clinics not using a federally-approved vendor received increasing % penalties to their reimbursements as deadlines passed. Forcing through EMR adoption was meant to improve outcomes.. or something.

Some of the requirements are defined by references to standards prepared by consulting companies, which charge for access to these standards. Additionally, certification of compliance with standards was farmed out to a couple consulting companies.

[specialist]

Ugh. Textbook regulatory capture. Sounds like hell. I've dealt with certification hazing in other industries; worse than useless. Further, my direct experience with CSC, McKesson, others is that they are irredeemably bad, complete bights on the economy. No different than every other big IT & mgmt consultancy.

Our problem with "meaningful use" was figuring out wtf they were even talking about, that there was no "there" there. Like being the boy who saw the emperor was naked.

HITECH was after my time.

During our time on the whipping post, we were grateful for all the standards for UI and reports. Less thrashing with customers. It seemed like every hospital had that one doctor who was an frustrated undiscovered human factors genius hell bent on sharing their vision with the world thru the medium of CRUD. Never mind the opinions of the actual users of ours stuff. What we'd call bikeshedding (or sabotage) today.

I don't know what to say about top down bureaucratic coercion. Short of switching to single payer, I can't imagine any other way to get competitors to play nicely together. That's not to say it's worth doing. But I've never seen outcomes which justify the effort (ROI), in any industry. Hopefully someone has examples, case studies, whatever of success that will prove my cynicism wrong.

As it stands today, all that federal money is just cheddar for campaign donors. Any accidental benefit to either patients or care providers will be quickly snuffed.