We are three months into the PCHIT initiative, and we would like to add additional sites that are local to the Center for Information Therapy, to establish a longitudinal relationship of proximity to care systems.

One such care system is the Baltimore Medical System, which I toured with Chief Medical Officer Kyu Rhee, MD yesterday. We went to the Belair-Edison site and the Middlesex site.

I have to say here that the day was a very interesting one for me, as I spent the morning at a Kaiser Permanente medical center in a nearby community, and the contrasts were very striking. Both organizations are working hard to improve their service in admirable ways, even if their service challenges are vastly different.

BMS is undergoing a significant transition, into the electronic age. It is also undergoing a leadership transition, with Kyu accepting a new position at the National Institutes of Health, where he will further pursue his interest in reducing disparities in health. Our tour was a little bittersweet because of this, as Kyu bonded with colleagues at the two medical centers we visited.

Kyu has been Chief Medical Officer of BMS for 2 years, with previous experience as a medical center Medical Director and internal medicine/pediatrics physician in a safety-net medical system in Washington, DC. BMS serves about 55,000 patients at 11 sites (as of 2006), and it funded acquisition of its EHR, manufactured by Misys, on its own, which is remarkable for an organization like this. As the data that Kyu pointed out, 8% of community health centers have EHRs. This puts BMS in the 92nd percentile. It also frames my work a bit, as I have been tending to visit the early adopters - having an EHR is far from being the norm.

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