What's it going to cost to convince the public that personal health information will be safe as the nation's hospitals and physician practices convert to EMRs? At least $25.8 million, based on a two-year contract HHS has awarded to public relations firm Ketchum.
Government Health IT reports that the contract is authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which calls on HHS to fund public education in support of adoption and meaningful use of EMRs. Ketchum will work with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and the HHS Office For Civil Rights--the office responsible for enforcing HIPAA privacy regulations--to "direct a series of communications at consumers, patients and healthcare providers to build awareness of and participation in health IT adoption and health information exchange," the magazine says.
But the decision is not without controversy, at least on the lawless frontier known as the blogosphere. "Did the HHS Dept. Just Hire a Propaganda Firm to Push Electronic Medical Records?" screams a headline on the liberal AlterNet blog. Though Ketchum has been an HHS contractor in the past--notably generating the campaign that helped 35 million seniors enroll in Medicare Part D--it also was the firm that created numerous fake TV news stories to back various Bush administration policies.
The firm also reportedly paid syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 in taxpayer money to promote the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind program.
For more information:
- see this Government Health IT story
- read this AlterNet blog post