In the midst of all the policy-making surrounding the administration's health IT incentive plan, it's possible to lose sight of the people it was designed to benefit. There are millions of potential meaningful users of health IT of course, but few whose stories are more compelling than two we touch-on in the current issue of Government Health IT.
By any measure, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjaminhas led an extraordinary life. Much of it has been spent in a small town on the Alabama gulf coast, where she practiced internal and emergency medicine, founded a clinic and picked up numerous accolades, including a 2008 MacArthur "genius" award. Along the way she experienced dramatically the value of health IT when a hurricane flooded her clinic and she and a colleague were forced to sun-dry their patients' paper records to hold onto vital data.
Chris Van Gorder, chief executive officer of Scripps Health in San Diego, treated patients in a similar cataclysm. In the war-zone-like conditions following the Haitian earthquake, he was scrub nurse to Scripps chief medical officer Dr. Brent Eastman, a trauma surgeon. Their medical records consisted of writing on bandages. The cell phone was their most powerful piece of health IT.
Lke many of their colleagues in emergency rooms, public health clinics and battlefield triage centers around the world, their stories are not uncommon. Most acute care-givers are working—and will continue to work—with an incomplete sets of records. And dire circumstances comes with the territory.
But the experiences of Dr. Benjamin and Van Gorder do underline important aspects of the role of government in health IT. One is that heart of meaningful use lies not so much in the digital record itself,, but in the network, the standards and the cloud that would make those records available on a cell phone in Haiti or under a triage tent in Afghanistan.
Van Gorder said that in Haiti it would have been helpful to first responders if the State Department or the military knew where providers were located in case conditions deteriorated or medical teams were needed elsewhere.
Information technology, from cell phone networks, to open source maps to social media platforms, could help fulfill that need. And a public safety intelligence group equipped with these tools might have helped direct resources faster—and made the difference in saving lives.
The Haiti disaster shows that a rudimentary cell phone is a powerful piece of health IT in a disaster zone. Operating over even basic versions of the health information exchanges envisioned in the health IT incentive plan, it would have been dramatically more useful—and meaningful.
