CHIME Update With President & CEO Russ Branzell, Part 1

Since being named CEO of CHIME three years ago, Russell Branzell has been focused on advancing the organization’s role in the industry — and not just by providing education for members, but by taking the lead with issues that are hindering the journey to digitization. Case in point? The lack of a consistent patient identifier. Last month, CHIME launched a challenge designed to leverage the top minds in the world to come up with a better solution. In this interview, Branzell discusses the game-changing question that Peter Diamandis posed CHIME’s board, his thoughts on the Cybersecurity Act, and the stratospheric rise of the CISO role. He also reflects on Chuck Christian’s term as CHIME Board of Trustees, and talks about why he is exciting about working with Marc Probst, and what attendees can expect at the upcoming CHIME/HIMSS CIO Forum.

Part 2



* MU changes — “You can be everything from a skeptic to an optimist.”

* Determining “the next step of revolutionary change”

* Keeping on the path to ACOs

* Launching the patient ID challenge

* “What is the biggest problem you need to fix?”

* New Board Chair Marc Probst – “A great leader in our industry.”



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Bold Statements

What we didn’t do well was learn from the mistakes along that journey and make course corrections as well as we could to keep us on that true, but we also aren’t so far off that we need to scrap the whole thing

We realized there was not going to be a very strong push, if at all, given the constraints that are there at the federal government to start solving this problem. And maybe it shouldn’t be a federal government solution — maybe it should be in the private sector.

That really got us thinking of a different way than the traditional let’s wait for the next 15 or 20 years for this to be solved in a normal industry maturation process. Let’s create a way to make this happen fast because we need to solve it fast — first and foremost for our patients and the caregivers across this country, but also just the inefficiencies and waste of money that’s going on that’s out there.

That this wasn’t a long-term solution; this was a catalyst to accelerate the industry and to reduce the burdens of exchange in care that are out there today. And this was the most logical way for us to do it.

He has a deep passion to change healthcare. He, like myself, has his own stories of pretty significant family issues, and we both have a pretty strong passion to change healthcare for the better.

Gamble:  Hi Russ, thanks as always for taking some time to speak with us.

Branzell:  Thank you for having us today.

Gamble:  Sure. So we have a lot of things to talk about, but I wanted to start by talking about Meaningful Use. Obviously, some pretty big news came out recently indicating that Meaningful Use is going to be replaced by something better. It’s a little vague right now and I know we’re waiting for more information, but just wanted to your interpretation of the news that’s hit.

Branzell:  Well, you can go a lot of different directions and you can be everything from an extreme sceptic to an ultimate optimist. I’m going to probably err more on the optimistic side of this, as I think the government — and in particular HHS, CMS and ONC — has been listening to the feedback that had been given by lots of different constituency groups, whether they’re representing physicians or, in our case, the IT leaders for hospitals and medical groups and physicians themselves. And I think as you look at that, they’ve heard that feedback and they’re looking for some opportunities to improve this.

I think the way it was laid by CMS administrator Andy Slavitt, it really was intended to be, ‘We’ve heard you.