While some industry estimates have healthcare IT spending expected to reach $34 billion this year government policies and other related issues are preventing small and midsize IT firms from getting their share of the action, according to a report released by IT trade association CompTIA. Many small and midsize IT firms are sitting on the sidelines of the nation's health IT transformation due to barriers caused mostly by government policies as they relate to education, security and privacy, and technical assistance, said authors of the CompTIA report, Health IT: The Essential Role of Small IT Solution Providers. The report contends that "several minor changes to existing policy" would help enable small IT products and services providers to play a bigger role in helping the nations tens of thousands of healthcare providers--especially smaller medical providers--transition to digitized patient records and other health IT enabled processes.