PORTLAND, ME – The Obama admnistration's point man for healthcare information technology told leaders in Maine on Friday that their statewide health information exchange – HealthInfoNet – could serve as a model across the country.

"I'm impressed and grateful for the InfoNet example," said David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health information technology. "Your example makes clear what power there is in local leadership. Each local institution, each local community, each local provider of care has to go through their own struggles."

"Reform will not be successful directed from a national standpoint," he said, "but can only be accomplished locally."

Blumenthal delivered the keynote speech at the 7th Annual Hanley Leadership Forum in Portland, where healthcare leaders also announced the launch of what they called the largest statewide health information exchange of clinical data in the country.

Blumenthal, who later toured Maine Medical Center in Portland to see the data exchange at work, said he is "enormously optimistic" about the potential for healthcare reform, though Congress would be leaving for its August recess without passing a bill.

Members of the audience asked how hospitals and health information exchanges would be able to access federal stimulus funds. Blumenthal told them he didn't yet have an answer.

While a federal panel has drafted criteria for "meaningful use," required by the government to be eligible for some of the $45 billion in incentives that will be available from Medicare and Medicaid, those criteria are not yet final.

The Office of the National Coordinator, which Blumenthal heads, will be disbursing $2 billion to help physician offices that want to become "meaningful users' of health IT. There is also $300 million in the federal stimulus package for promotion of health information exchange.

Blumenthal could not say yet when the money would become available or how it would be distributed, but he reiterated his support for the Maine HIE and others that are in place and being started across the country.

"If we want to realize our ambition, we're going to have to support health information exchange," he said.
 
David Howes, MD, chairman of the HealthInfoNet board of directors, said HealthInfoNet offers a public-private partnership that includes providers, state and local officials and consumers.

"As other states move forward on their own plans to develop statewide systems, we believe that Maine can offer important lessons learned that could help accelerate adoption of electronic systems," he said.