IBM Signs Electronic Healthcare Record Agreement

IBM Global Financing, the lending arm of the Big Blue, has announced that it has struck deals with four prominent electronic healthcare record (EHR) organisations.

Big Blue will provide them with essential financial assistance to help them keep their records in digital format, while they are waiting to get their announced stimulus package under the new US health-care stimulus bill, according to Bloomberg. 

The company has penned financing agreements with four major EHR providers, namely Siemens Healthcare, Healthcare Management Systems, Lavender and Wyatt Systems, and SCC Soft Computer, to provide them with the necessary financial report to embrace the digital format for maintaining records. 

The Obama administration has laid out a new act, dubbed as American Recovery and Reinvesting Act (ARRA), under which healthcare organisations adopting digital technology for storing health records will get appropriate stimulus for it. 

However, the reimbursement package from the government will take some time to reach to the organisations, and IBM is recompensing for that period of time, according to Richard Dicks, GM for IBM Global Financing North America. 

Commenting upon the move, Dicks said: “Many are waiting for government funding working its way through the system, but need the benefits of the technology today. Technology financing helps speed up implementation in a more cost effective manner”.