Guerra On Healthcare: HIMSS Buzz Doesn't Square With Reality

Healthcare CIOs find themselves in a triage-like situation today where the fire du jour is just about all they have time for. Except for the largest of the large, it's "get through today and we'll worry about tomorrow when the sun comes up." That's a tough world to live in, but it's the one every agency which has piled on regulation after regulation, program after program, has brought about. It's all too much, too fast, it's all far too complicated and exhausting.

The only way this works out to any degree of satisfaction is if the government does a darn good job of crafting meaningful use, so when healthcare providers finally get to look up at what payment reform will require, they have all the technologies in place to make it happen. Physician quality reporting initiative (PQRI), meaningful use, and ACO (with its bundled payments and incentives for quality) must all work together seamlessly because there'll be no time or resources to turn the ship before the next dynamic takes hold.

So that's my two cents: the imposed buzz at HIMSS was around ACOs, payment reform, and quality improvements, but the buzz on the streets is no more than qualifying for Stage 1 meaningful use payments. To get those payments, providers are still grappling with the regulations to understand exactly what they require. Yes, we're still at that stage.

But artificial buzz should not be dismissed out of hand because it can get us thinking about the world of tomorrow. And, where possible, we should do what we can today to be ready for that world. Just as importantly, the buzz of tomorrow must not be confused with the reality of today.

As I've written before, the government, thorough meaningful use, is now crafting the five-year strategic IT plan for every hospital and physician practice in this country. They wanted it and now they've got it. The government, through CMS, is also going to craft payment reform. To a certain degree, sadly, we've all becomes spectators in a game that will define our professional (and to an extent, personal) world. Let's just hope the people orchestrating it take today's realities into consideration when building the world of tomorrow.

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Anthony Guerra is the founder and editor of healthsystemCIO.com, a site dedicated to serving the strategic information needs of healthcare CIOs. He can be reached at [email protected].