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Podcast: HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber previews HIMSS12

I’m about to head to the airport for my flight to Las Vegas and HIMSS12. As has become customary before each year’s HIMSS conference, I sat down with H. Stephen Lieber, CEO of HIMSS, this past week to discuss the state of health IT and what to expect at the big event.

The timing of this interview was interesting. We spoke Wednesday morning at the new HIMSS office in downtown Chicago, one day after CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner told a gathering of American Medical Association leaders that federal officials were re-examining the Oct. 1, 2013, deadline for adopting ICD-10 coding, and one day before HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made it official that there would be a delay.

Also one day after this interview, HIMSS announced that it has taken over the mHealth Summit from the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health. While Lieber talked extensively about mobile healthcare, he gave no hint that this news was coming.

Meanwhile, the whole health IT universe had been expecting HHS to release its proposed rules for Stage 2 of “meaningful use” of electronic health records this past week. That didn’t happen. Monday is a federal holiday, so I don’t think we will hear anything until at least Tuesday, which, coincidentally, happens to be the first day of the HIMSS conference. As if we don’t have enough to keep us occupied in the next few days.

The recording is a little fuzzy. I’m not really sure what created the echo and the background noise, since we were in a dedicated interview room, one of the nice features at the new HIMSS digs. Radio interference perhaps? That happened to me a couple years ago in the old HIMSS office on East Ohio Street. Just pretend you’re listening on AM radio or something.

Podcast details: Interview with HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber, February 15, 2012. MP3, stereo, 128 kbps, 31.9 MB, running time 34:51.

1:00 Logistics of HIMSS12 in Las Vegas after the venue change
2:00 Why the Venetian-Palazzo-Sands might work better than the Las Vegas Convention Center
2:55 Why the conference starts on Tuesday this year
3:25 Massive scale of the conference
5:25 Return of Cerner and Meditech and some first-time exhibitors
7:45 mHIMSS and HIT X.0
10:15 Twitter co-founder Biz Stone keynoting and the state of social media in healthcare
12:00 Accountable care and realignment of incentives
14:15 What might be in proposed rule for Stage 2 of meaningful use
17:20 Preview of HIMSS survey of hospital readiness for meaningful use
20:30 ICD-10 readiness
25:00 Greater public awareness of health IT but continuing difficulties in communicating the finer points of healthcare reform
27:50 Mobile healthcare
31:25 The growing importance of clinical analytics

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February 18, 2012 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: Accountable Care Organizations  ARRA  Business intelligence  CMS  data mining  EMR/EHR  health IT  health reform  Healthcare IT  HHS  HIMSS  ICD-10  interoperability  mobile  Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act  podcast  regulations  social media
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Health Wonk Review: Campaign 2012

This week’s Health Wonk Review, hosted by Louise Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider, takes a theme of Campaign 2012, rather scary, given that primary season has just started, IMHO. My recent post about the two sides of GOP candidate Newt Gingrich and the reluctance of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to discuss health reform beyond the insurance aspects is part of this rundown. It also apparently puts me in the running for Wonkiest Health Wonk of 2012—but, again, there is a long way to go.

I hope this is just the start of my campaign to get people to understand that health insurance is not healthcare and that having good insurance doesn’t mean you will get good care. It’s an uphill battle and I’m certainly not the best-funded candidate, but I’m in it for the long haul.

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February 3, 2012 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: health reform  Health Wonk Review
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Gingrich on EHRs in the 2009 stimulus

I don’t like to get political on this blog, but I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Newt Gingrich we’ve seen on the campaign trail of late is quite different from the Newt Gingrich who was a tireless advocate for health IT and EHRs from about 2004 to 2009.

Lately, Gingrich has, as primary candidates are wont to do, been pandering toward the more ideologically pure elements of his party, not addressing the center, as will be necessary during a general election. Notably, Gingrich has jumped on the “repeal Obamacare” bandwagon, essentially making the ridiculous argument that America does not need healthcare reform. That’s interesting, because Gingrich, after he left Congress, founded the Center for Health Transformation to push for technology-enabled health system improvement.

Back in 2004, Gingrich joined with strange bedfellow Hillary Clinton to advocate for a national, government-funded strategy to support adoption of health IT. That idea eventually morphed into the HITECH Act section of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus legislation. Gingrich, like most Republicans, opposed the bulk of the stimulus, but he was an ardent supporter of HITECH. Here’s the proof: Read more..

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January 29, 2012 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: health information exchange  health IT  health reform  Healthcare IT  Legislation  politics
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Video from Sebelius on ‘The Daily Show’

As promised, here’s the video from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” Wednesday night. Yeah, she and other pols have been all over the airwaves of late, but I find that a “fake” news anchor like Jon Stewart often keeps people more honest than the average TV talking head.

In the first segment, Sebelius discusses the “public option” for health insurance and touches on quality of care and outcomes, to which Stewart says it would be cheaper for society if smokers died by age 60. In Part 2, which focuses on competing health reform bills in Congress, Sebelius mentions prevention, wellness and quality. It’s not very revelatory for those of us in the know, but it’s entertaining.

Part 1

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Kathleen Sebelius Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Joke of the Day

Part 2

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Kathleen Sebelius Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Joke of the Day

On the much lighter side, earlier segments of last night’s show parodied national health systems in Canada and the UK and the uninsured situation in the U.S.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Drag Me to Health
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Joke of the Day

and

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Drag Me to Health – Universal Health Care
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Joke of the Day
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July 16, 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: health reform
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Sebelius on ‘The Daily Show’

FYI, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is the guest on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” tonight. In fact, the whole episode is dedicated to health reform. I’ll embed the video once it’s posted on Thursday, but you can still catch it tonight. There will be a rerun at 1:30 am EDT/12:30 am CDT and those of you out west can catch the first run at 11 pm PDT.

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July 15, 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: health reform
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Breaking news: Sebelius confirmed as HHS secretary

The Senate today confirmed Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services, on Barack Obama’s 99th day as president. Sebelius, who was sworn in this evening, is the last member of Obama’s Cabinet to win confirmation, and it’s not a moment too soon, as someone has to deal with the outbreak of swine flu that has some people panicked.

Here is what Reuters had to say.

Now that we have an HHS secretary, we need people to head all the department’s agencies. Stay tuned.

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April 28, 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: Uncategorized
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Sebelius has tax issues, too

When Kathleen Sebelius was nominated to be secretary of Health and Human Services a month ago, I snidely remarked that I hope she’s current on her taxes. That’s the issue that derailed the nomination of President Obama’s first choice for HHS, Tom Daschle.

Someone left a comment on that post just a few minutes ago about that hope being deflated. I checked, and sure enough, there’s a story this evening about Sebelius having to pay back taxes.

Mr. President, please pick me for a top spot in your administration. I’d like to under-report my own income, too. While you’re at it, get us an HHS secretary and perhaps a CMS administrator, stat. Someone needs to parcel out that $19.2 billion in health IT stimulus money, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology only has control over $2 billion of that. Get going and stimulate the economy.

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March 31, 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: HHS
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Sebelius and … who?

While nominating Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be secretary of Health and Human Services, President Obama today also picked Nancy-Ann Min DeParle as “health czar,” officially known as the head of the new White House Office for Health Reform.

DeParle’s name is new to me, but I guess it shouldn’t be. She ran the Health Care Finance Administration—now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—during Bill Clinton’s second term as president and was director of the Office of Management and Budget during Clinton’s first term.

DeParle currently is a director of Cerner, Boston Scientific and Medco Health Solutions. She also is a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Obviously, she’ll have to quit those boards.

She also is a former Medicare Payment Advisory Commission trustee.

Her husband, Jason DeParle, is a senior writer for the New York Times and an author.

As of this writing, her Wikipedia entry calls DeParle a “MILF.” How long until the White House gets wind of that and makes the change?

UPDATE, 12:40 p.m. CST: This change has been made. I knew it wouldn’t take long.

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March 2, 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: Barack Obama  HHS
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Saturday night special: Sebelius to head HHS

Here’s a rare post late on a Saturday night, but one I needed to put up: The Associated Press is reporting tonight Washington that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is President Obama’s pick to be Health and Human Services secretary. Obama will officially nominate Sebelius on Monday, according to the report.

Hopefully Sebelius is current on all her taxes, unlike Obama’s first choice, Tom Daschle. Health reform is a Big Deal and really shouldn’t have to wait any longer than it already has.

And now back to my regularly scheduled Saturday night. I will wait until tomorrow to read up on Obama’s reform proposal and the opposition I hear is lining up to fight certain elements of it.

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February 28, 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: health reform  HHS
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