Inter v iew Health Information Technology Is A Vehicle, Not A Destination: A Conversation With

The first U.S. national health care information technology (IT) coordinator esti- mates that if the current rate of interoperable electronic health record (EHR) adoption is sustained through 2014, it would create a launchpad for quality gain and health care spending reduction in excess of 50 percent in the subsequent decade. But in this conversa- tion with Leapfrog Group cofounder and U.S. health care purchasing innovator Arnold Milstein, David Brailer identifies several environmental changes as critical to the material- ization of this dividend. These include providers' ceding control of clinical information to pa- tients, universal public availability of provider performance comparisons, and moving health policy from a no-man's land between government and market control. (Health Af- fairs 26, no. 2 (2007): w236-w241 (published online 20 February 2007; 10.1377/hlthaff