Dive Brief:
- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology notified vendors last week that they will be watching for threats to competition surrounding health IT. In a blog post, the agencies wrote that they will be monitoring platforms and standards, market concentration, participants’ conduct, and information available for business consumers to make purchasing decisions.
- The FTC noted its concerns with "potential threats to competition from high switching costs, data lock-in, misguided standard-setting activities, and other features of health IT systems and platforms." The department warned vendors it will be well-poised to monitor the situation.
- ONC wrote that it is specifically concerned with blocking of interoperability among providers, a key focus of healthcare reform. The office has received complaints about vendors intentionally inhibiting healthcare data sharing by restricting the exchange of information between users with other vendors’ products.
Dive Insight:
The ONC wrote on its site there is plenty of evidence that "health IT markets are not functioning as efficiently as they could be." The office noted bad business practices are, in fact, hampering healthcare improvement. The agency focused on the inability to compare the effectiveness of the IT products and lack of cost information. These deficiencies inhibit the ability of providers to make informed decisions about the various products available for providers and consumers to purchase.
"As market-based reforms shift provider incentives towards new care delivery models that reward quality and value, there is a risk that some providers may find themselves 'locked in' too rigid technologies or information sharing networks," wrote the ONC, continuing that this paradigm makes it "prohibitively expensive to switch to new technologies that offer superior value, capabilities, and opportunities for delivering higher quality and more efficient care."