Robert Fromberg
Editor-in-Chief, HFMA
I found myself sitting next to the CIO of a large for-profit healthcare system at some event a few years ago, and I asked him the question you'd expect an editor of a healthcare finance publication to ask a CIO: "How do you demonstrate ROI for new clinical IT?" He looked at me with some surprise in his expression and said, "Oh, I don't have to demonstrate ROI. No one asks. They know it's for better quality...it's just the right thing to do."
Monday on this blog we posted a piece about roundtable discussions among CFOs about implementing clinical IT. Before the event, many of us at HFMA spent time talking about financial barriers to clinical IT. One thing we talked about was whining...that is, we didn't want to address this topic in a "woe is me, IT is too expensive, the industry is suffering, and the government needs to save us" sort of way. In the midst of the discussion an article in CFO magazine told of widespread resignation that IT just would not deliver promised value--more woe-is-me.
Well, it turned out that the executives in the discussion (and the ones we surveyed) were more like the CIO I had met. Sure, they were concerned about how they would pay for EHRs, but neither financing nor ROI was viewed as an absolute barrier. What was most striking in the discussion, according to HFMA President and CEO Dick Clarke, was the "dogged determination" to implement these systems.
Not a whine was heard.
