Those were among the concerns to emerge Thursday at the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium's 2009 Health Information Technology (HIT) Conference here. Several hundred health care professionals attended the day-long conference, which took place as Congress is debating how much money for health care IT should be included in the president's economic stimulus plan.

"This isn't going to be like landing a passenger airplane in the Hudson River with no lives lost; I think there are going to be some casualties," said , CIO at , a private collaborative that includes 36 Massachusetts hospitals, specialty and long-term care facilities and . "There will be some waste. You can't bring that much money into this industry that fast and not have some of that occur.

Glaser, who took part in a panel discussion at the conference, was referring to the fact that health care organizations and individual doctors will start getting incentive money for EHR systems in 2011, giving them less than two years to get ready for the rollout. And that doesn't include figuring out how to coordinate the sharing of sensitive information between caregivers.

The (HITECH) would provide roughly $25 billion for the creation of a national EHR system that would fundamentally change the way medical information is stored and shared among hospitals, private practices and other health care providers. The first $5 billion of the money would go immediately to the (ONC) for Health Information Technology to lead the way.

Under HITECH, physicians will be eligible for between $40,000 and $65,000 if they show they are using health care technology to bolster quality of care.