BusinessTN

At a highly publicized July event in Memphis, Gov. Phil Bredesen proclaimed the beginning of a program called Volunteer eHealth Initiative, aimed at improving the information technology side of TennCare and health care delivery across the state. Nothing was said about the actual nerve center behind this feat. While the Memphis area will be the primary focus of the pilot project because it has the highest concentration of TennCare patients, the behind- the-curtain action is happening in Nashville, at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health.

Even the vast majority of employees at Vanderbilt University Medical Center are not aware of the goings on at the center, which is no surprise considering the director of the TennCare project there says the project is “not closely coupled with Vanderbilt Medical Center’s activities.” Mark Frisse, director of the new Regional Informatics Program, says the TennCare initiative will be successful only if it is owned by everyone, which may explain why neither Bredesen nor Vanderbilt have shouted from the mountaintops that the Center for Better Health is the home for significant efforts to put TennCare on the leading edge of information technology.

“To use a musical analogy, the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health is not really writing the score or conducting the orchestra,” Frisse says. “We’re giving the musicians a place to play.”

However, that place is arguably the most important player in the new project, and it’s far more than just a meeting space. A look inside the West End Avenue center reveals what thousands of health care executives—and U.S. senators’s staffer interested in nationwide health care information technology issues—have seen. Open office space is divided only by movable walls with plenty of room for brainstorming, role-playing and strategizing. Workers at the center also record everything that takes place there—discussions are transcribed and live action is recorded on digital cameras.

These tools are providing the backbone for Frisse and other health care players across the state to begin a program aimed at ultimately creating comprehensive medical records for Ten- nessee patients that can be accessed at any health care facility, with the patient’s permission. Cost savings from this medical informatics technology are expected to come from preventing duplicative medical tests and drug prescribing errors. When it comes to recording a patient’s medical problems, standardization seems daunting and dangerous, which is why this project’s role is to assess and introduce technologies to help shed light on what standards are needed, how those standards should be defined, and the costs and benefits involved.

While this analysis is underway, those involved are trying to fund the initiative. The State of Tennessee and Vanderbilt are working to obtain a minimum of $5 million in federal funds, which would come with the awarding of a federal contract to conduct one of a few such statewide projects. The state has committed as much as $10 million to pay for the data-sharing project.

A serious investment is on the line, with hopes for serious cost savings and improved patient care in Tennessee. Though the masses may not realize the beginnings of a statewide—and possibly nationwide—transformation of health care information technology is taking place at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, the mission of this place is being carried out as minds are brought together and ideas are hatched. The results of the next few months could save lives. Those in the know will know where it all came together.