My conflicts of interest - FY10 edition

Every year I publish my conflicts of interest publicly, such 2008 and 2009

It's that time again.

My salary is paid by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for my duties as CIO.

BIDMC invoices Harvard Medical School for the time I spend there.

In 2009, NEHEN and MA-Share merged, so my only position in state-level healthcare IT is Chair of NEHEN, an unpaid position with no benefits/authority/special treatment of any kind.

I will serve as the chair of HITSP until January 31, 2010 when my term expires. For the past 4 years of HITSP service, I have not received any compensation or benefits. My plane flights to Washington have been reimbursed at cost.

I will serve at the vice-chair of the HIT Standards Committee for as long as it suits ONC and the Committee. I will not receive any compensation or benefits.

In the past I have served on many Boards and advisory panels. Knowing that ARRA would completely consume my free time at BIDMC, NEHEN, and the Federal standards committees, I resigned from all Boards and advisory panels except one - AnvitaHealth, a decision support service provider. The only reason I continue to serve on this Board is because I so strongly believe in their work which normalizes disparate data streams from clinical and administrative sources then provides real time decision support to clinicians at the point of care and to administrative decision makers. All this is done via a web-services architecture. I wish more companies provided Software as a Service decision support via web services that could be easily plugged into existing applications without significant IT effort. I have received a grant of options, none of which I have executed. Thus, I receive no compensation and have no stock ownership in the company.

With regard to other stocks I own, I established a family trust in 1993 and all my investments are managed by a third party. I do not directly control these investments, nor track their day to day variation. I do not make any business decisions in any of my professional roles based on stocks held by the trust. On a day to day basis I do not even know what stocks are in the trust, although I have suggested that healthcare IT stocks be avoided to eliminate even the appearance of a conflict of interest. I checked this morning and the trust has no healthcare IT holdings.

That's it - in 2010, I will receive a BIDMC W2 and a series of travel reimbursements at cost - nothing more. Should there be any other income that I cannot yet forecast, I will donate it to BIDMC/Harvard for the benefit of my employees as I have done in the past.