It's too early to tell whether the regime of physician informaticist David Brailer as the nation's first healthcare information technology czar will be viewed as a watershed or a blip in IT history. During his tenure as head of HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology—from May 2004 to May 2006—Brailer tirelessly preached the virtues of advancing healthcare IT.
But despite two years in the bully pulpit, a key outcomes measure for Brailer—the percentage of hospitals and physician offices with complete clinical IT systems in use—remained woefully small. For example, one report says computerized physician order-entry systems are being used in just 6% of nongovernment hospitals.
