EXCLUSIVE: Russ Branzell, CHIME’s Incoming CEO, Speaks First to Healthcare Informatics

One of the things that happens is that as I listen to Buddy and Rich [Rich Correll, the current president and CEO of CHIME, who will now become chief operating officer] and so many others, I see a need to glue all the professional associations together, all of which have a role to play out there. And we believe we can’t influence the policy discussion, or on how HIT is being leveraged, unless we can gather together with those other associations. Just yesterday, as an example, we were in Washington, to comment on and discuss the patient safety components relative to HIT, and around concerns that exist at the federal level that HIT could actually create harm—and that’s a collaboration that needs to take place with ONC, and AHRQ [the federal Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality], and other agencies. And we need to do things right on the front end in areas like that.

Obviously, there are a lot of current issues to continue to work on. Meaningful use is reaching its peak of acceleration, and the ICD-10 transition is being worked on, and there are so many initiatives around population health, and so on; and the role of the CIO is so critical in all this.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the vendor partnering that is the other element of CHIME; the vendor organizations are members of CHIME and we want to make sure they’re part of our success. There are over 90 vendor organizations that are already a part of the CHIME Foundation, and there are obviously many firms that want to collaborate with us.

Where do you think your experiences and qualities will particularly fit well into the CEO position at CHIME?

I really believe in the team concept, and working with everyone on staff. Part of it is my relational leadership style; I enjoy building new and unique things, and want to build things collaboratively with others. And there’s an obligation in an organization like CHIME, that the reason you’re there is to serve. That’s true of healthcare in general—it’s to serve patients if you’re in patient care organizations; in this case, I have an overwhelming desire to serve the patient community, the provider community, the HIT community—and that includes you [in the media].

But it really is about positively influencing the discussion around policy and healthcare reform. We have an obligation to help our country, and the cost of healthcare could really cause damage to the economy. And I feel I have an obligation to help in that effort. And the other thing I think I bring to this is the deep relationships I have in the community, to help advance the mission of CHIME, which is to really serve our communities.

The other thing is that I think I have a pretty clear vision of what CHIME can do, not only to continue what we’re doing now, but to grow the vision. The board of CHIME has a desire to continue to grow CHIME, but also to grow and diversify its efforts to meet and expand its vision.

One concern that some in the HIT community might have has to do with the intensifying major-party partisanship in Congress and in the state legislatures. One example of that phenomenon is the letters that small groups of Republicans first in the House of Representatives and then in the Senate, sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last fall, demanding changes in the meaningful use program. Are you concerned at all that rising levels of partisanship both in Washington and in the statehouses might impact healthcare IT-related advocacy work by CHIME and other associations?

I think when you see numbers with a lot of zeroes and commas in it, you’ll always see concern about the numbers involved; and I think those letters perhaps expressed some concern with the level of cost involved. It doesn’t mean that people didn’t want to spend any money on healthcare IT initiatives, but over how we’re spending our money in that area. But when you look at other industries like banking and airlines, the transformational processes have always been automation-led. So I think bipartisan support for HIT will continue, but we will need to show our outcomes and results.

Senator Daschle [former South Dakota Senator Thomas Daschle], at the BPC [Bipartisan Policy Center] meeting yesterday, said that we need to ensure that we’re making the proper investments at the right time and in the right ways, to get the proper outcomes. And that’s exactly what we’re out to do, to make sure that CIOs and healthcare IT leaders have the resources they need. And we have a big part of the community that is not in the large hospitals and medical groups, that we have to continue to serve. So I’m pretty optimistic going forward.

Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

From a big-picture perspective, this is a significant honor and privilege to serve the community, and I feel a significant deep and passionate obligation on my part to serve the community. And I want to make sure we do everything possible to serve the HIT community, the vendor community, and the healthcare community in general. HIT has moved into the mainstream in healthcare management; but we want to make sure we leverage the investments in IT to advance healthcare in general. And I want to make sure that CHIME continues to help us change the way we deliver healthcare and serve our communities, in a very short period of time.