... Next I swung by Bronson Methodist Hospital, the sprawling health center totally unrecognizable from the hospital of my youth, for a look at the health care data system of the 21st Century.

Bronson's Clinical Portal is now available to 6,800 physicians and other health care professionals.

It provides an absolutely amazing level of detail on each patient, from their complete medical and medication histories to test results of all sorts, from blood work to CT scans to X-rays -- all available securely and remotely.

The system was built of a McKesson HPP Horizon Physician Portal system tweaked by Bronson's IT staff, said Mike Cramer Bronson Healthcare Group manager of applications and development.

Now that Bronson's literally dozens of IT systems can talk to each other, the next challenge is to get them to talk to the systems of other hospital groups -- and they're working on that in Kalamazoo too. The Southwest Michigan Health Information Exchange is gearing up with assistance from Birmingham's ChangeScape Inc.

Planning for the HIE began last fall though a grant from the Michigan Department of Public Health, and the plan should be complete and an implementation kickoff should occur within about six months.

The challenge is getting normally competitive health care chains -- and information vendors -- to allow even a neutral third party to exchange their data. There are five major health systems in the seven-county region to be covered by the HIE.

But those behind the effort say it will do much to reduce medical error and stop wasteful duplicate testing and care.

The federal stimulus package offers the region $47 million over four years to implement the system -- and that's just for hospitals. Each practicing physician can get $44,000 to hook into the system. But just as there's a carrot, there's also a stick -- docs who don't hook into a regional HIE by 2015 will get a decrease in Medicare and Medicaid payments.