The AMDIS Connection: The Key to Meaningful Use Is the Belief that Its Possible
Ultimately, what made the recent CMIO Summit on the Key to Meaningful Use a success was that the audience was as enthusiastic and engaged as the speakers. There was a lot of collegiality and meaningful exchanges of information; everybody felt that they were heard.
There was no question that the audience, like CMIOs across the nation, wanted to get a better perspective on meaningful use and what has worked. It’s a confusing time for practitioners, with healthcare itself undergoing major regulatory and cultural changes—from new reimbursement rules to the changing role of physicians, to practices being bought up by hospitals. At the same time, there’s a tremendous incursion of IT into medicine. Some people are very comfortable with that, while others are just trying to keep their heads above water and survive, let alone be successful.
The CMIO Summit wasn’t an assembly of homogenized academics or only practitioners; it was an “all-of-the-above” congregation of healthcare IT. Likewise, the speakers spanned a very wide background of health leadership beyond IT. Their message was familiar but bears repeating: You need to differentiate your career in health IT, and it’s not as simple as “buy [insert vendor name here] and you’ll be all set.” A lot of people have heard some of this before, but everyone needs to understand that for some questions there seemed to be consensus, but on many others there is no eternal truth that they are missing.
Healthcare IT practitioners also need to embrace the idea of jumping in, staying engaged and insisting on measurement of outcomes, and of having to continuously prove the value of information environments by testing them. People at the event came away energized about what they were already doing and got some new ideas about how to be more successful. They also got the sense that meaningful use was doable: This wasn’t a meeting to say, “Great. You did what you did with 500 students and fellows, and I’m never going to have that.”
The summit attendees also demonstrated that CMIOs are turning out to be as diverse as the physicians in this country. Professional organizations are beginning to understand that—case in point: The AMA has hired a CMIO, and the group is trying to reach out to medium- and small-size medical practices to help them onto the onramp of the information era in healthcare without scaring the bejeezus out of them or making them feel that they have to bet the farm on equipment, or they have to do everything right now and if they don’t make meaningful use, they’re dead.
Whether in practices or in associations, CMIOs are getting people used to the idea of healthcare informatics being patient care, and technology being an ally, not just a way for third-party payors to find out another way to not pay me as much.’ That’s the message that those that know are starting to come together and share, and that feels right.
As we learn more and more about meaningful use and about the change in overall healthcare legislation is going to make on healthcare, I think that’s playing stronger and stronger. I’m glad of that because the best part of the message of both health IT and HITECH legislation is that demonstrating the safety and quality of the care that’s being delivered, is now required. You need to show that you’re using the best evidence—the outcomes learned, the practice changes—especially for chronic disease states.
The arrival of that message, whether at a summit in Atlanta, a hospital boardroom in Iowa or a press conference in Washington, D.C., is not a moment too soon, given the simultaneous changes in the demographics of the profession, the changing economic expectations of the profession, and the changes in both the authority of physicians in society and in communications with our patients.
There was no question that the audience, like CMIOs across the nation, wanted to get a better perspective on meaningful use and what has worked. It’s a confusing time for practitioners, with healthcare itself undergoing major regulatory and cultural changes—from new reimbursement rules to the changing role of physicians, to practices being bought up by hospitals. At the same time, there’s a tremendous incursion of IT into medicine. Some people are very comfortable with that, while others are just trying to keep their heads above water and survive, let alone be successful.
The CMIO Summit wasn’t an assembly of homogenized academics or only practitioners; it was an “all-of-the-above” congregation of healthcare IT. Likewise, the speakers spanned a very wide background of health leadership beyond IT. Their message was familiar but bears repeating: You need to differentiate your career in health IT, and it’s not as simple as “buy [insert vendor name here] and you’ll be all set.” A lot of people have heard some of this before, but everyone needs to understand that for some questions there seemed to be consensus, but on many others there is no eternal truth that they are missing.
Healthcare IT practitioners also need to embrace the idea of jumping in, staying engaged and insisting on measurement of outcomes, and of having to continuously prove the value of information environments by testing them. People at the event came away energized about what they were already doing and got some new ideas about how to be more successful. They also got the sense that meaningful use was doable: This wasn’t a meeting to say, “Great. You did what you did with 500 students and fellows, and I’m never going to have that.”
The summit attendees also demonstrated that CMIOs are turning out to be as diverse as the physicians in this country. Professional organizations are beginning to understand that—case in point: The AMA has hired a CMIO, and the group is trying to reach out to medium- and small-size medical practices to help them onto the onramp of the information era in healthcare without scaring the bejeezus out of them or making them feel that they have to bet the farm on equipment, or they have to do everything right now and if they don’t make meaningful use, they’re dead.
Whether in practices or in associations, CMIOs are getting people used to the idea of healthcare informatics being patient care, and technology being an ally, not just a way for third-party payors to find out another way to not pay me as much.’ That’s the message that those that know are starting to come together and share, and that feels right.
As we learn more and more about meaningful use and about the change in overall healthcare legislation is going to make on healthcare, I think that’s playing stronger and stronger. I’m glad of that because the best part of the message of both health IT and HITECH legislation is that demonstrating the safety and quality of the care that’s being delivered, is now required. You need to show that you’re using the best evidence—the outcomes learned, the practice changes—especially for chronic disease states.
The arrival of that message, whether at a summit in Atlanta, a hospital boardroom in Iowa or a press conference in Washington, D.C., is not a moment too soon, given the simultaneous changes in the demographics of the profession, the changing economic expectations of the profession, and the changes in both the authority of physicians in society and in communications with our patients.