Brailer to miss TEPR

SALT LAKE CITY—It’s always a surprise these days when national health information technology coordinator David Brailer, M.D., is not a featured speaker at a conference dealing with electronic health records. But that is exactly what is happening at the annual TEPR conference here this week.

TEPR organizers said that Brailer’s office informed them over the weekend that Brailer had to cancel his planned Tuesday appearance here because the White House called him to some sort of urgent meeting.

My best guess is that the replacement speaker the government will provide will be Bill Yasnoff, M.D., director of the National Health Information Infrastructure project within HHS.

The bigger question I want answered is the reason for the White House meeting. Again, making an educated guess, someone in the administration decided that Brailer’s speech was not ready for public consumption. I believe—though I could be wrong—that Brailer was to begin laying out an action plan based on last winter’s public request for information.

Stay tuned. This could be interesting.