Lack of funding, clout didn't deter Kolodner from tackling ONC's top spot

Dr. Robert Kolodner had his eyes wide open when he took the top spot at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS.

He knew that his predecessor, Dr. David Brailer, had asked in vain for billions of dollars to help subsidize the cost of EHRS to hospitals and physicians, federal money he thought ONC needed. But Kolodner took the job anyway, saying that timing was important. His work helped lay the foundation for the accelerated EHR adoption period that did come under his successors, Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. Farzad Mostashari.

The trained psychiatrist also said he wasn't particularly bothered when Congress and the Obama administration drafted the HITECH provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 while he was ONC chief, largely without consulting him.

“I've been in government too long for that to bother me,” he said.

Prior to ONC, Kolodner had remarkable success at the Veterans Health Administration, the healthcare arm of the Veterans Affairs Department, with its VistA electronic health record system.

At the time, the early 2000s, private-sector hospitals were struggling to achieve a 5% adoption rate of computerized physician order entry systems, but more than 90% of VHA physicians were using CPOE for medication orders on VistA, which had been deployed across its 172 hospitals and hundreds of clinics.

Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn