Optimistic on Meaningful Use? Some CIOs Are

HCI: What are your members most concerned about right now?

Correll: Product certification is the concern I hear about the most. There’s a lot of concern there; they’re waiting for answers from their vendors on where they stand in line to be upgraded. But among the board members of CHIME, whom I do talk with frequently—and of course, these are prominent CIOs—I would say that’s the dominant issue, the certification-related requirements.

HCI: Your organization should be pretty well-placed to help its members get up to speed on these issues, because you’re at the center of the swirl here, right?

Correll: Selfishly speaking, this kind of activity is good for the kinds of education we provide. And we’ve done some webinars to get interpretations out as quickly as we could, and so forth. And we’re about to pose questions to CMS that have filtered up through the members, and whose answers we’ll publicize to the members. Webinars are becoming our major educational vehicle du jour, because this stuff moves so fast; as soon as we can latch onto some new information, we can quickly strike up a session. So, we’re scaling up our webinar platforms for more seats, and so forth, because we anticipate that that’s going to be a regular vehicle for us.

HCI: How do you see the next couple of years for CIOs?

Correll: Well, the hospitals will do what’s in front of them. The additional excitement, which has already been bootstrapped and is up and going, is the HIE movement. CHIME has put together our StateNet, which has really become active. We’ve got a CHIME member CIO in every state who’s become a coordinator within their state to marshal the collective efforts of CIOs in their state and in neighboring states. And Russ Branzell is the chair of StateNet. And we’ve had discussions with ONC about working closely with the regional extension centers. And the CIOs need to be engaged with them. So to me, the real excitement is when these hospitals really do start connecting data, and we poor consumers won’t have to fill out those terrible paper forms every time; and if I drop in Dubuque, hopefully, they won’t inject me with something that will kill me! But talk about obstacles and challenges—there are concerns over competition, and so on. So it’s certainly got its challenges; but if you take Russ in Colorado, those folks have put a stake in the ground, saying, we’re going to do it. And they’ve even committed to a common patient identifier.

HCI: So you feel optimistic in general?

Correll: Well, I’m optimistic because the members are optimistic. I applaud their optimism. I love a we-can-do-it attitude, and that attitude is obviously being reflected in the results in this poll. Now, if we suffer some disillusionment along the way, our members will have to buck up and find ways to overcome it. Everyone will have to come together, including the vendors. And I look forward to a healthy discussion in Phoenix [where CHIME’s annual Fall Forum will be held in October] around the topic of everyone having to pitch in together. The vendors will say, look, if we can respond quickly, can the hospital be ready for CPOE, or whatever, can they get ready in time? So it’s a two-way street.