Financial, Legal and Organizational Approaches to Achieving Electronic Connectivity in Healthcare

In an effort to stimulate the adoption of much-needed IT systems in healthcare, the Connecting for Health Working Group on Financial, Organizational and Legal Sustainability of Health Information Exchange worked from February to July 2004 on two key tasks: an analysis of the legal and organizational issues and barriers related to health information exchange, and a high-level qualitative financial analysis of the business case for adoption of clinical information systems from the providers' perspective.

The goal was to develop an in-depth understanding of the barriers faced by ambulatory care providers in adopting health information technology (including technologies that allow for information exchange across settings), and then to use this new-found knowledge to identify potential starting points and near-term opportunities for physician practices to adopt healthcare information technology (IT).