This February, I'll be attending my eighth HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition. Back in 2004, the industry was fairly new to me, although I had written about both healthcare and information technology for other publications. But it was a thrilling time to begin a new career, not least because, as one headline in the HIMSS Show Daily put it, "Suddenly, EHR is the talk of D.C."
You might recall the bipartisan references.
On Jan. 12, 2004, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York told students at Cornell University's Medical College that the government needed to invest in healthcare information technology. "Despite the enormous financial and human costs of poor health quality data, the U.S. healthcare sector has been slow to adopt IT," she said. While the banking sector spent $15,000 per employee on information technology, healthcare spent only $3,000 per employee.
Two weeks later, then-President George W. Bush made healthcare IT a national priority. In his State of the Union Address, he said, "By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs and improve care."
The President followed that up shortly after in his January 24 radio address. We "can control healthcare costs and care by moving American medicine into the Information Age," he said. Adopting a "unified system of computerized records … would improve care and help prevent dangerous medical errors, saving both lives and money."
And HIMSS04 keynoter and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called for the rapid transformation of the U.S. healthcare system, including a demand that all new Medicare enrollees have an electronic record by Jan. 1, 2005.
The industry was abuzz. Dave Garets, who was the board chairman at HIMSS, noted that it was the first time healthcare IT had been included in the State of the Union Address. "This remark," he said, "substantially elevates the level of awareness and importance to an issue our industry has grappled with for more than two decades."
Hmmm. Make that three decades, almost. What happened to buzz? Has our progress from NHII to NHIN, from RHIO to HIE, matched the excitement from 2004?
I'm of the camp that believes progress has indeed been made, but it has been slower and decidedly less impressive than I had initially hoped. In fact, one can look at the development in two phases – the slow, steady infrastructure building years leading up to the 2008 recession, and the quick-start "meaningful use" incentive-laden years since HITECH and the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
I'm anxious to see 2011 unfold. I believe the federal incentives and eventual penalties will move the meter for EHR adoption, but more than that, I think articulating the meaningful use of healthcare IT as a requirement of what it means to practice medicine today will change attitudes and behaviors.
And I hope, eight years from now, we'll look back at this year and find remarkable how quickly our healthcare system changed.
What do you think? Have we made progress in adopting information technology? Please email me at jack.beaudoin@medtechmedia.com.
