Dear President-Elect Obama,

Congratulations on your historic win. As we emerge from the first decade of the 21st century, I agree with your campaign message that there is great opportunity for change and the ability to harness new ways of looking at existing problems to propel us forward as never before. As President, you will have many complicated issues to address and manage, both foreign and domestic, more so than perhaps any incoming President in the history of this great nation.

Despite a lengthy campaign that covered so many issues, I am still left with this huge question, “How will we manage healthcare going into the 21st century?” Having practiced emergency medicine for 17 years, I know the shortcomings of our employer-based healthcare insurance system and our inability to address the under-insured.

Having also been in the health IT field for many years as a CMIO, I have also know the challenges of implementation cost and difficulties with EMR adoption from an organizational and clinician perspective. In my more recent role as a vendor, I speak daily with customers who have spent millions deploying transactional systems yet cannot get the data they need for quality improvement, cost analysis and business intelligence. (more…)