Health IT leaders see challenges, opportunities

With billions in Stimulus funding in the pipeline for Health IT upgrades nationally, Thursday's NHCC gathering of informatics eagles in Nashville seemed to signal both local players' resolve to play pivotal roles in development and adoption of health IT, as well as the sizeable risk we run that all that spending won't change healthcare...enough. VU Medical Center's informatics guru, Bill Stead, M.D., insisted that the needed innovation won't materialize if executives throughout the healthcare system don't "stop playing defense around a model that's not sustainable." David Brailer, M.D., the like-minded former national Health IT coordinator for the latter Bush Administration, warned that would-be HIT providers must employ deeper understanding of how healthcare actually works, if they're to justify their share of the pie. Addressing the Nashville Health Care Council event, Bredesen F&A Commissioner Dave Goetz said the State of Tennessee should, according to NHCC's post-event release (pdf), 'build the infrastructure and the information sources necessary for the private sector to then use to drive value and innovation'. Stead, Goetz and others put all this in even stronger terms during an event last fall, as reported then by VNC. Brailer said he believes Nashville is one of the nation's few cities prepared to be a leader in HIT. NHCC President Caroline Young agreed, and stressed that NHCC's goal is to "help position our members" for such leadership. A related summit report by NashvillePost.com covered inadequate patient engagement in HIT diffusion, the need for standardization and the importance of demonstrating dramatic improvement in health care outcomes, flowing from IT investment. Further VNC coverage of informatics and related.