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Building on a recent post about Peter Orszag’s resignation, and stimulus funding for healthcare IT…As long as we’re throwing money around by the billions… If I were Dr. Blumenthal, I’d dangle $500M ala DARPA in front of Amazon, Google, Nintendo, Facebook, salesforce, eBay– or any other capable body– and sponsor a shoot out: Build an inpatient/outpatient EMR and financial management system that will rock our world.

The final Meaningful Use regulations issued today by the Department of Health and Human Services jettison a proposed all-or-nothing program in favor of a more flexible approach. According to the HITECH Act — part of the massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — healthcare providers and hospitals are eligible for stimulus monies if they become meaningful users of certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. The program — which offers eligible professionals up to $44,000 under Medicare and $63,750 under Medicaid, and hospitals millions — has been developed by HHS/CMS and ONC over the last 14 months. Based on how many providers quality, the federal tab could range from $9.7 to $27.4 billion, according to CMS.

Before I levy my criticisms on Orszag and the mess that his philosophies will leave behind for healthcare CIOs, you need to understand that I’m as politically liberal as they come.  I voted for Obama and celebrated in Grant Park when he was elected.  However, while I’m a spendthrift with my money, I’m a tightwad [...]

Psychologists say people don’t research problems to find solutions, but rather to support the solution they’ve already decided upon. To cite a recent political example, many said the Bush administration “cherry picked” intelligence to foster support for a war it was already committed to. In addition to the selection side, this type of analysis entails [...]

Earlier this week, Pamela McNutt, SVP and CIO of Methodist Health System in Dallas, gave a presentation entitled “Meeting Stage 1 Meaningful Use: A View from a Healthcare System,” at the AHA’s Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C.  McNutt — chair of CHIME’s Policy Steering Committee and former chair of the organization’s Advocacy Leadership Team [...]

News related to the exchange of health information and the entities that facilitate that exchange continue to dominate the headlines. And for good reason. Access to a comprehensive view of a patient’s health information across encounters and providers is widely seen as one of the most important contributors to the Obama administration’s goals of improving [...]

As part of its Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program to promote innovation, ONC has awarded four organizations a total of $60 million — Mayo Clinic of Medicine, Harvard University, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Each institution’s research projects “will identify short-term and long-term solutions [...]

I had a brief chat with Dr. David Blumenthal last week that basically covered four areas: Transparency at the ONC; HITREC and communities of shared learning; Personal Health Records and possible certification; Rural practices and Critical Access Hospitals. Regarding transparency, which is something I’m fairly passionate about and have seen some improvements on at the ONC, Dr. Blumenthal said, “Trust is such an important factor in the management of sensitive information that it has to be attended to in everything we do. I think that being open is one way to create trust.”

A journalist’s job is to listen for trends, sift through the noise, and find the kernel of importance in a speech, trial, or presentation. It’s a skill that comes over time, after many mistakes and, for me, after getting many a lead ripped to shreds by my journalism professors. I think I’ve gotten the hang [...]

Tuesday morning at HIMSS about 100 CIOs had the opportunity to attend a standing room only meeting with Dr. David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The invitation arrived late Monday night simply stating that Dr. Blumenthal wanted to invite a small group of CIOs to have a discussion about the “progress being made [...]

The much-anticipated NPRM on Certification was released today, revealing a two-phase plan that looks to satisfy the letter of the law in time to pay out stimulus cash. The first proposed program creates a temporary certification process under which David Blumenthal, M.D., “would authorize organizations to assume many of the responsibilities that will eventually be [...]

Instead of recommending small adjustment to the Standards and Certification Interim Final Rule (IFR), the 10th meeting of the federal HIT Standards Committee was consumed by a fundamental, philosophical debate of just how specific the group should be in its regulations, and the nature of the regulatory process itself. “We have to balance when to [...]