Blumenthal: "It's just the beginning of the beginning"

I don't normally blog on Fridays, but after speaking with Dr. David Blumenthal, head of ONC, yesterday after the announcement of the final two Beacon communities, I didn't want to wait to post until Tuesday.

With the health IT programs under the stimulus bill hitting the ground running - the regional extension centers, statewide health information exchanges, workforce training and Beacon Communities - Blumenthal aptly said, "It's just the beginning of the beginning." Indeed.

As part of the stimulus bill, the programs promise job creation across the country. Workforce training is expected to create 40,000 more jobs, and meaningful use of health IT to create tens of thousands of jobs, according to Blumenthal.

Referring to the Beacon Communities, he said, "Any market that succeeds in bringing health IT to work well will gather momentum as technology creates high-quality, well-paying jobs - jobs of the future."

More importantly, Blumenthal said, "The federal government has changed the conversation about health IT in the U.S." That's not an overstatement. Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis projects the EHR market doubling by 2012. The research firm identifies the market drivers as the federal incentives for the meaningful use of EHRs and changes in healthcare reform.

Consider that, unlike other industries such as financial, the healthcare industry historically has been a slow adopter of information technology. We had the early adopters and champions, but no critical mass. Consider today how fast health IT is being implemented.

While critics will say otherwise, the federal government's approach to the meaningful use of health IT to improve the quality of care and patient safety, eliminate errors and waste, and make the system more cost efficient has been thoughtful.

When asked to assess the HITECH Act's programs to date, Blumenthal said, "We have - in a timely way - implemented provisions of the HITECH Act as they were intended." He called the task of driving health IT adoption a "big, ambitious, hard job." "We approach it with humility," he said.

Blumenthal said the federal government understands that changing healthcare is a huge undertaking, involving not just technology solutions but social solutions.

One thing the federal government has accomplished already is creating a community in which healthcare stakeholders are collaborating and talking about how to pool resources and achieve meaningful use of health IT to fundamentally and positively change how we deliver healthcare.

It's just the beginning of the beginning.