I attended the first day of the San Francisco Regional Healthcare Stimulus Exchange National Road Show on Tuesday. Nonstop rain and gusty winds kept a few attendees from showing up, but the group that was there was definitely on a fact-finding mission.

At my table to my left was a government relations officer who worked for a local children's hospital. On my right was a CMIO of a critical access hospital in a Western state. I asked the government relations officer what she thought of the meaningful use criteria and where was her facility in terms of meeting the meaningful use criteria.

Her children's hospital had a mature EMR. She said the system could meet 95 percent of the criteria. Pretty impressive. It's tempered, however, by the fact that it was the product of a four-year initiative that required significant funding.

The CMIO said there was no solid state entity that could handle the responsibility of all the programs coming out of Washington, D.C. The state didn't seem organized and was far behind others. There seemed to be a lack of leadership and healthcare organizations were left to themselves to get more information. A health IT system was implemented at the CMIO's healthcare organization, but sadly it is not fully functional.

The state has health record banking initiatives in three communities and the CMIO's hospital banded together with eight other hospitals to form a health information exchange. Sounds like a lot of progress to me. The caveat is that progress is being stunted by competition and politics. At the end of the day, the CMIO said he had gotten a lot of information and the conference was useful.

I don't know how many in the ballroom were as mature in their EHR initiative as the children's hospital attendee or how many had experiences closer to the CMIO. One thing was certain from listening to the questions and talks during the breaks and lunch: No matter where they were with their initiative, a lot of basic questions across the group were being asked of meaningful use.

People can read the 550-plus page regs and keep up with the press releases of updates of federal stimulus funding programs, but there's nothing like participating in a forum that enables knowledge sharing for everyone and networking after everyone's gone back to their organizations. Healthcare, they say, is local. Getting all those regulations and proposals need to be disseminated at the local level, which is what made this regional conference valuable.

If you can't attend the second day (and you're an HITN reader), you can register for the Webcast for free by using discount code HITN1.

If you're in Boston Feb. 9th and 10th, check out the Boston Regional Healthcare Stimulus Exchange Conference.