Baker Wonders Where's the Privacy?

At a meeting held by the Health IT policy committee on Tuesday, Roger Baker, the Veterans Affairs Department's new chief information officer, injected a dose of practical reality to the very wonkish discussion of what "meaningful use" of electronic health record systems means -- as required by the 2009 American Recovery and Investment Act.

The 19-member policy committee had somehow missed the issue of patient privacy based on oral and written presentations at its meeting today, so about an hour into the discussion, Baker raised the issue - and forcefully.

Patient privacy, Baker told the committee and David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology in the Health and Human Services Department, is the "critical piece" in development of a nationwide electronic health record system and it is the "key to adoption."

Kudos to Baker for stating the obvious. I can only hope that in the future, privacy will indeed top the list of any discussions about electronic health records.