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We're clearly at a pivotal juncture in health IT. Federal policy makers are finalizing requirements for Stage 2 of the $27 billion incentive program for Meaningful Use of electronic health records. Healthcare organizations are struggling to put ICD-10 coding in place, and many providers are worrying about whether accountable care and pay for performance are here to stay.

The upcoming national elections may influence some of these issues, but no matter how the elections play out, providers will have to manage, secure, and make interoperable huge stores of data from internal and external EHRs and, soon, genetic profiles. Taken together, these factors make for a busy time for healthcare CIOs.

To find out how healthcare providers are tackling those and other challenges, InformationWeek Healthcare recently gathered eight leading IT executives at its New York City offices. Our CIO Roundtable covered a wide range of topics, including obstacles to Stage 2 MU, outcomes-based reimbursement, BYOD policies, advanced clinical analytics, clinical decision support, the role of IT in population health surveillance, and strategies to recruit and retain IT talent.

Our panel comprised:

>> Rebecca Armato, executive director, physician and interoperability services, Huntington Hospital, Pasadena, Calif.

>> George Brenckle, CIO, UMass Memorial Medical Center, Worcester, Mass.

>> Gary Christensen, CIO and chief operating officer, Rhode Island Quality Institute, Providence, R.I. The institute serves as a Beacon Community, Regional Extension Center, and health information exchange.

>> Dan Drawbaugh, CIO, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh.

>> Mark Hulse, CIO, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, Fla.

>> Stephanie Reel, CIO, Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore.

>> Michael Restuccia, CIO, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia.

>> Larry Stofko, executive VP, The Innovation Institute, St. Joseph Health System, Laguna Beach, Calif. Stofko is the former CIO of the Orange, Calif.-based health system.

What follows are excerpts from that three-hour discussion.

Research: 2012 Healthcare CIO 25

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