IT Investments for naught unless they cut healthcare costs, says Greenspan

CHICAGO — A massive investment in healthcare IT will be meaningless in a global economy if the technology doesn't rein in runaway costs because healthcare spending is unsustainable in the current economic climate, according to former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Simply pumping more dollars into Medicare will not solve the healthcare crisis in America. "We have to find a way to curtail the federal funding," Greenspan said here Wednesday in a keynote address to the annual HIMSS conference, and perhaps IT is that way.

"If you cannot solve the overall funding problem, the [global] competitive issue will be quite secondary," Greenspan said. "There's going to be a clash invariably because resources are not going to be as ample as they have been."

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