Meaningful Use

After nearly 20 years as a CIO, I've learned that even with the best people, best planning and appropriate budgets, large, complex projects encounter issues imposed by external factors that cannot be predicted during initial project scheduling.

What I find stifling is the pace at which meaningful use is proceeding. When you put an entire industry under the MU pressure cooker, the need to meet federal mandates overwhelms anything else.

In the Boston marketplace, Partners Healthcare is is replacing 30 years of self developed software with Epic. Boston Medical Center is replacing Eclipsys (Allscripts) with Epic.

There has been some buzz lately about how interoperability is a non-issue. I beg to differ. With increasing pressure from federal initiatives like Meaningful Use Stage 2, there is growing need for information exchange across the industry.

Every now and then a string of words will get put together, and peoples ears perk up, and you realize that you've created a new meme. That happened to me at the HIMSS Standards and Interoperability panel presentation.

Anyone who understands the importance of continuity of care knows that health information exchange is essential. How are we supposed to cut waste and duplication from the healthcare system and truly focus on patient welfare if doctor B has no idea what tests doctor A conducted, or what the results were?