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July 10, 2006

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Dr. George

There's a telling comment in the article:

"The federal government is not pushing either model, but instead is letting the market sort itself out."

The trouble is that, in HIT, markets tends to sort themselves out by profitability rather than quality of products or services. For example, here are two HIT news blurbs just today: "Rhode Island Assembly Approves $20 Million Health Information Exchange" (http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php/100133) and "Health-information exchange gets 1st funding" (http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2006/07/10/newscolumn5.html?hbx=e_sw). Such funding opportunities could provide great resources for moving HIT state-of-the-art forward -- lots of organizations are coming out and funding these initiatives quite handsomely. But the funded parties seem to be going back to the same starting gate, asking the same starting questions -- questions that have been addressed adequately before.

For example, it's known from HIE experience that you have to get buy-in from participants (providers and physicians) before you can establish a successful, self-sufficient RHIO or other general information exchange. So why not get buy-in before funding, instead of using seed dollars to lobby prospective participants for support? That's the kind of function a federal forum, formal or not, could provide to move acceptance forward by orders of magnitude, IMHO.

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