Inside CHIME: Q&A with Chuck Christian, Winner of 2017 Federal Public Policy Award
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10.26.17 By Candace Stuart, Director of Communications & Public Relations, CHIME |
Chuck Christian, a longtime advocate for applying health IT to improve patient care, has been named the winner of CHIME’s 2017 Federal Public Policy Award for CIO Leadership. Christian is vice president of technology and engagement at the Indiana Health Information Exchange, which operates the nation’s largest interorganizational clinical data repository. He currently is the vice chair of CHIME’s Policy Steering Committee (PSC) and served as the PSC chair in 2011, 2013 and 2016. In addition, he was a member of CHIME’s Board of Directors between 2002 and 2004; chaired the CHIME Board of Directors in 2015; and chaired the CHIME Foundation Board of Directors in 2016.
He shares his experiences and goals in a Q&A.
How did you get involved in advocacy and public policy?
Chuck Christian, VP of Technology & Engagement, Indiana Health Information Exchange
When I was on the CHIME Board the first time in 2002 to 2004, we were talking about advocacy and at that point in time it was advocating for the role of the CIO within healthcare organizations because that leadership role was just starting to take shape. But as CHIME looked at what was happening in Washington, it became apparent that there needed to be a more expert voice in those conversations. We hired Sharon (Canner as director of advocacy), and a group of us started working with her. We were the subject matter experts on all things health IT.
What has been the Policy Steering Committee’s focus recently?
We have been working to address several appropriate modifications in the timing of the 2015 Certification criteria requirements and continue discussions around the eQM (electronic quality measure) programs. All those things require a significant amount of work for all healthcare organizations.
Anything we can do that educates the legislators and the regulators and then results in getting better and realistic guidelines and regulations put in place is a win for the industry. It is more about ensuring the people who make the rules understand the impact of those rules and also trying to provide enough correct information and points of view so that the regulations that come out are not just additive.
What are you most proud of?
The thing I am most proud of is that the D.C. staff has created such great relationships with both the Hill staff and the regulator staff. They have created opportunities for the membership to interact at those levels. That is a great service to the members and to the industry as a whole.
What do you see as the biggest policy challenges going into 2018?
The biggest challenge in 2018 is going to be clarity. We lost Secretary (Tom) Price. (Price resigned in late September. Don Wright, a deputy assistant secretary for health and the director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, was named acting secretary. In October, President Trump named Eric Hargan his new acting secretary.) We had gotten into more of a rhythm; it was apparent that this administration is going to have a little less hands-on approach. The thing about it is, because of the relationships that the staff in D.C. has been able to create, is there is a grand opportunity to have more conversations on the topics that impact the HIT industry at the health system/hospital/provider level.
Some of the things we have talked about are: We are measuring all this stuff but not looking at outcomes to the patient. That is where I would like to see more focus and energy. Does it really have any impact on quality? Does it have any impact on safety? Does it have any impact on cost? I don’t know. We haven’t really looked at that. It is one thing to have rules and regulations, but is it really moving the dial to where you need to move it? We need to take a more learned approach about some of the things we are doing.
Interoperability, where I’m focused now, is not one thing, it is many things. How do we leverage that to improve the quality of care and inform the care? I will keep working on that.