Blumenthal: Savings From Health IT To Exceed CBO's Estimates

National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said he expects the actual savings from health IT to "far exceed" the Congressional Budget Office's projection of about $12 billion over 10 years. Dr. Blumenthal said, "Electronic health records and other forms of health IT can certainly be improved, and there are examples of bad implementation and other problems." He added, "I still think that on the whole, across the country we'd be better off with universal availability of electronic health records. We'd have fewer errors, fewer missed diagnoses, less duplication of tests and fewer adverse drug events."