Blumenthal named national coordinator
Well, Robert Kolodner, M.D., won’t be keeping his job as national coordinator for health IT after all. That’s because the Obama administration today named Harvard University medical informaticist David Blumenthal, M.D., to lead the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
Blumenthal, director of the Institute for Health Policy at Partners HealthCare System in Boston, was a senior advisor to Barack Obama during the presidential campaign and years ago was an aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), so this sounds like a clear political move. Kolodner was a career professional at the Department of Veterans Affairs prior to taking over at ONC in 2006, and Healthcare IT News reports that he likely will be going back to the VA.
A key component of the recovery act is the implementation of the current strategic plan and the current team at ONC created it (there are only about 10 people there) so I would anticipate that Rob would stay for six months to implement the stimulus plan, update the strategic plan and then probably retire and become a very valuable outside consultant to ONC. I don’t see him going back to the VA however it would be a perfect fit and their open source national health information system is the model we should be trying to duplicate. It is unfortunate that they changed the position back to a political one and the policy and standards committees are now political appointments as well (destroying the six months of work that was spent standing up the new National eHealth collaborative). Sadly the last administration gutted it, centralized development and is now parceling out pieces of it to large vendors and the vendors have won the first round so hopefully David will be able to push them back. I doubt however that someone of his age has the change management style that is needed and his lack of experience in HIT development and implementations is a huge concern. Hopefully his policy background and Obama connections (ahh there we go again) will bring something to the table but it is a mistake for them to replace Rob and his team right before the project starts.