Free Healthcare IT Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use, ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Get all the latest Health IT updates from Neil Versel for FREE!

Poll for new national coordinator is rather laughable

Leave it to those in the ivory tower of Modern Healthcare to screw up something as simple as an unscientific poll about who should be the next national coordinator for health IT.  The poll lists a whopping two dozen names, ranging from the obvious—Dr. John Halamka, Dr. Paul Tang, current deputy national coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari—to the dark horse—Dr. Robert Hitchcock of T-System, Paula Gregory of the “Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicince” (sic)—and even a few laughable listings.

For one thing, Dr. David Brailer is on the list. The first national coordinator (2004-06) left Washington because he wanted to be with his family in San Francisco. He’s currently running a $700 million equity investment firm and couldn’t possibly want to get back into the political game, could he? Besides, he’s a Republican. Dr. William Hersh, CMIO of Oregon Health and Science University, would make a good choice, but he’s already said he doesn’t want the job.

Another choice is current CMS Adminstrator Dr. Donald Berwick. Dirty politics is about to force him out, and if that happens, you can bet he won’t want to be within 400 miles of Washington. (Hey, that just happens to be the distance to his home in the Boston area.) I’m really steamed about the Berwick situation, and am preparing  a separate post that hopefully will go up tomorrow.

Modern Healthcare also includes Janet Marchibroda, who’s identified as chief healthcare officer of IBM. Sorry, but Marchibroda, former CEO of the eHealth Initiative, left IBM last year. My sources tell me she’s now working at ONC, serving as de facto chief of staff to current coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal. (Blumenthal, as you no doubt know, is leaving in April.)

Missing from the long list of names is Johns Hopkins CIO Stephanie Reel, who won in a landslide the equally informal, unscientific poll that HIStalk ran a couple weeks ago. HIStalk did report, though, that Allscripts effectively stuffed the ballot box. Also not included is Blumenthal’s predecessor, Dr. Robert Kolodner, but he doesn’t want to go back, either.

I’m not going to run another survey here (hey, I doubt I have the readership to make it worthwhile anyway), but I’m curious if people think a non-physician could or should be national coordinator.

Post a Comment(3)
March 10, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: CMS  media  ONC
Tags:                                    

Is the National eHealth Collaborative still necessary?

I’ve been wondering the last few days if the National eHealth Collaborative still serves a useful purpose. This group, you may remember, is the private-sector outgrowth of the American Health Information Community, the public-private board set up by the Bush administration to advise the Department of Health and Human Services on various health IT issues.

The plan all along was to spin AHIC off into the private sector, and that happened in 2008. With the advent of the Obama administration, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 set up the Health IT Policy Committee and the Health IT Standards Committee as official advisory panels, consisting of leaders from both government and the private sector. And in the private sector, numerous groups, notably the eHealth Initiative, had been well established before NeHC came along.

Do we really need a group like NeHC? For that matter, the eHealth Initiative seems less relevant than it was, say 3-4 years ago.

Post a Comment(1)
February 7, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: ARRA
Tags:    

A stimulus for the webinar industry

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. the economic stimulus legislation, just became law, and already the webinars had started.

The eHealth Initiative held the first session in its webinar series Tuesday at 3 p.m. EST. That was perhaps an hour after President Obama signed the bill during a ceremony in Denver. eHI will repeat the overview session today at 10:30 a.m. EST and hold new online sessions on Thursday, Friday, next Monday and on Feb. 25 and 27. It’s free for eHI members and $150 for the entire series for non-members.

HIMSS at least waited for the ink to dry before starting its own webinar series. The first session, an overview, is set for Wednesday at 2 p.m. CST. (That’s 3 p.m. for those of you on the east coast who were unaware the United States had multiple time zones and noon for those of you on the west coast with similar misconceptions.) Additional events are planned for Feb. 23, March 4, 11 and 18. Each session costs $79.

HIMSS also announced plans for 10 related educational sessions at the HIMSS Annual Conference in April, right here in the Central time zone.

I’m sure others have educational programs in the works to sort through the massive legislation that will pump $19 billion of borrowed federal money into the health IT industry. Unfortunately, the legislation failed to outlaw the word “webinar.” I’ll have to call my congressman about that one. Oh wait, that was Rahm Emanuel, who’s now the White House chief of staff, so I guess I don’t have a voice in Congress at the moment. I’ll have to see if the Webster’s people can’t ban “webinar” from the English language.

At least we get a special election and not a gubernatorial appointment to fill Emanuel’s seat, the Illinois 5th District, previously held by Rod Blagojevich and, before that, Dan Rostenkowski.

Post a Comment(0)
February 17, 2009 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Filed Under: ARRA  HIMSS
Tags: