"This is a policy position, and Blumenthal is an outstanding health care policy person with a deep, deep background in health care information technology," Lieber says.
"He was involved in the Obama campaign, and all of us knew he was one of the individuals advising the president-elect on technology issues," Lieber adds. The HIMSS CEO says Blumenthal apparently had "considerable influence" on the crafting of the health care I.T. provisions in the economic stimulus package.
Blumenthal most recently served as director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He is a practicing physician and also serves as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Blumenthal, in a paper published in January by The Commonwealth Fund, outlined his support of many of the same I.T. principles found in the stimulus package. For example, he argues against government funding of the development of new open-source electronic health records applications that could be made available for free. Instead, he endorses federal incentive payments for buying existing commercial systems.
The economic stimulus bill, now the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, makes the position of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology permanent and expands the coordinator's duties. Blumenthal will have considerable influence over how the $2 billion in "jump start" health I.T. funding in the act is spent. He'll also influence development of rules and policies to implement other provisions of the law. These include the Medicare/Medicaid I.T. incentive programs, enhanced privacy and security requirements, and development of a national health information network.
While Blumenthal's predecessor in the position, Robert Kolodner, M.D., focused on launching specific projects, "Blumenthal will build off those foundations and get them integrated into policy and practice," Lieber predicts. "He'll be very engaged in long-term policy and direction setting."
Linda Kloss, CEO of the American Health Information Management Association, Chicago, says Blumenthal's appointment "illustrates the Administration's unqualified commitment to serious health care reform and the vital role quality health information must play."
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