John Glaser, CIO at Partners Healthcare, will be heading down to D.C. the week of May 4, to begin a six month stint helping to hammer out details of the federal government's $20 billion stimulus programs for health IT.Glaser will be working closely with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the Obama administration's new national health IT czar, Dr. David Blumenthal, a former Partners' colleague.

In his new special advisory role, Glaser says he'll be traveling from Boston to D.C. four days a week to work with the Office of National Coordinator of Health IT--headed by Blumenthal--and HHS "on the specifics of the HITECH portions of the stimulus bill."

Glaser and team certainly have their work cut out for them. There are lots of important HITECH details that need to be figured out, and that includes some basics, like the definition of "meaningful use" for doctors and hospitals utilizing health IT.

Beginning in 2011, health care providers who use electronic medical records and other health IT systems in "meaningful" ways will be eligible for government financial rewards ranging from tens of thousands of dollars for doctors--to millions of dollars for hospitals. But after 2014, laggards will be penalized with reduced payments from Medicare.

People who know Glaser say he'll add a good dose of pragmatism. Partners Healthcare, whose flagship hospitals include Mass General and Brigham & Women's, was an early adopter of e-medical record systems, and a host of other clinical IT systems. So, Glaser knows firsthand that implementing and using those systems successfully takes a lot of trial and error, patience, money, and pain.

In an interview with InformationWeek a couple of years ago, Glaser predicted that before the use of E-health records becomes widespread in the U.S., "there will be different levels of pain, and a form of chaos, before order."

In fact, as my colleague Bob Evans also points out, a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, aptly called "Rock and a Hard Place," highlights pressures faced by health care CIOs as they're forced to slash IT budgets while at the same time rolling out e-medical record systems to meet HITECH deadlines for reaping in financial rewards and avoiding penalties.

One of Glaser's Partners colleagues thinks Glaser's participation in finalizing the specifics of the government's HITECH programs will ultimately save all of us some pain.

"I'm glad as an American that John's going down there helping them get it right," says Partners CTO Steve Flammini.

What are your suggestions for the government getting the details of the health IT stimulus programs right? Let us know what you think.

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