Report From HIMSS12: Wrap-Up of the Largest Health IT Conference

This is a time of great promise in health care, yet an oppressive atmosphere hung over much of HIMSS. All the speakers--not least the government representatives who announced rules for the adoption of electronic health records--stressed commendable practices such as data exchange, providing the patient with information, and engaging with the patient. Many berated hospitals, doctors, and vendors for neglecting the elements that maintain health. But the thrust of most sessions was on such details as how to convert patient records to the latest classification of diseases (ICD-10)...

...But ICD-10 is a sideline to the major issue of Stage 2 meaningful use. Why, as I reported on Wednesday, were so many of the 35,000 HIMSS attendees wrapped up in the next step being forced on them by the federal government? The scandal is that these meaningful use concepts (using data to drive care, giving care-givers information that other care-givers have collected about the patient) have to be forced on them. Indeed, institutions like Kaiser Permanente that integrated their electronic records years ago and concentrated on the whole patient had relatively little work to do to conform to Stage 1, and probably have the building blocks for Stage 2 in place. And of course these things are part of the landscape of health care in other countries. (The proposed regulations were finally posted last Thursday.)

Haven't our providers heard that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure? Don't well-educated and well-paid executives invest in quality measures with the expectation that they'll pay off in the long run? And aren't we all in the field for the good of the patients? What is that snickering I hear?...

...Redwood MedNet in Northern California is an example of a health information exchange that adopted standards (CONNECT, before the Direct project was in place) to simplify data exchange between health providers. Will Ross of Redwood MedNet told me that qualifying for Stage 2 would be simple for them, "but you won't hear that from many vendors in this exhibit hall."...