Feds Approve $44K Doctor Reimbursement for Using Drchrono (YC W11) iPad App

Wow... incentives for making the doctors life easier? What a deal. Just what the medical industry needs... more breaks.

Nice going, guys. As a med student, this sort of stuff really excites me. It seems like the government is willing to incentivize the adoption of electronic mobile technologies in clinical practice.

To all who are making quips about the $44k incentive: the amount of money that is spent on resolving logistical, administrative, and medical errors because of disorganized, incomplete health records, yearly, is astronomical. Doctors are often very technologically stubborn and those who run their own practices will usually opt for implementing whatever traditional, paper-based system they're accustomed to as they have concerns that lie elsewhere. $44k (or less) in government incentives could prove to be an amazingly cost-effective investment if adoption of these technologies can truly reduce the risk of error.

I've been eager to play around with Dr. Chrono, but I'm not practicing yet, so is there a demo I can play with? I suppose I could just sign up for a free account.

Personally I don't think the 44K incentive has ever made any sense. All it has done is allow existing EMR providers to charge more for their poorly designed software. Physicians would have switched over on their own, if the reason were compelling enough - and that reason would be user friendly software at a reasonable price. Startups would have had more opportunities without the incentive. Now they have to offer it just to compete.

I can't tell if this is serious or not. Either way, it seems like we all benefit from devices that make doctors more effective.

Am I right that the meat of this product is a back-end web application, rather than an iPad App? Anyone know if the web service may have existed as a fully fledged EHR business prior to the mobile app being created?