President Barack Obama arrived at the Cleveland Clinic without fanfare about 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon, slipping unseen into a side entrance of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Pavilion under the cover of a white tent.

Obama spent about 40 minutes at the hospital touring the heart center, learning more about the hospital's innovations in health information technology, and even getting a hands-on lesson with the Clinic's cutting-edge robotic heart surgery tools.

Obama chose the hospital because he believes that innovations like those he saw Thursday are examples of what makes the Clinic a model of low-cost and high-quality care.

About 200 Clinic employees, patients and their family members blocked a hallway in the Pavilion for an hour hoping to catch a glimpse of the president's arrival or departure. Many held up cell phones and took pictures every time a car appeared.

Even after a Clinic security employee told the crowd that Obama would not be coming through the area, only half of the group cleared out.

Terri McGlynn of North Ridgeville was among those hoping to see the president. She and her daughter Katie were at the Clinic because McGlynn's husband underwent surgery Monday.

They left Tim McGlynn on the 10th floor of the Miller Pavilion while they stood watching for Obama.

"My dad's gonna kill us," Katie said. "He's upstairs waiting to be discharged."

Outside, Cleveland and hospital police blocked off parts of Euclid Avenue near the building to foot traffic.

To ensure that no one could see Obama's entrance or exit from hospital windows that overlook East 96th Street, security removed hardware to keep people from opening the shades.

Obama said he wasn't at the hospital for an endorsement of his health-care plan. Instead, he was seeking information.

"There has been a lot of discussion in Washington about the very different model that we and the Mayo [Clinic] have, and he wanted to understand it better," explained Dr. Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, chief executive and president of the Clinic.

The Clinic's physician employee-based model -- which includes one-year contracts with annual professional reviews -- helps reduce costs, Cosgrove said.

Physicians are paid a salary instead of a fee for each service they perform, reducing the number of treatments a patient might receive.

The two also talked about lowering the cost and burden of often preventable diseases such as diabetes and obesity -- a topic Cosgrove has mentioned before on the national stage.

Dr. C. Martin Harris, the Clinic's chief information officer and the architect behind the hospital's innovative partnerships with Google and Microsoft, discussed the hospital's numerous health information advances with the president.

Harris has taken a national leadership role in the area.

In May, he was one of 23 experts named to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Health Information Technology Standards Committee, which makes recommendations to the federal government on the electronic exchange and use of health information.

The Clinic took a leading role in medical records management in early 2008 when it formed a partnership with Google to make patient records available online.

In November of that year, the Clinic began working with software giant Microsoft's program HealthVault, which allows patients to store their health information from multiple sources in one place and to stay connected to their physicians.

Currently, the Clinic has more than 200,000 patients managing prescriptions and appointments and receiving test results online.

Harris said Obama was interested in hearing about how the hospital used all its resources in combination with information technology programs to deliver high-quality care -- particularly preventing duplicate testing and reducing errors.

In June, Cosgrove told CNN that the hospital's health information technology efforts had not yet resulted in cost savings.

"What we've seen is our quality's gone up -- substantially," Cosgrove said.

"What we haven't seen is our costs come down. It's like the difference between an abacus and a cash register. Clearly the cash register is better, gives you a better record. But it isn't cheaper."

Harris would not address Cosgrove's comments directly, but said that he believes the Clinic's investments in this technology will result in long-term savings.

"It depends on how you define cost," said Harris.

"Directly implementing the technology does produce some cost savings, but I think that you end up at a wash from just installing the technology. Where the cost savings comes in, is how you use the technology in how you care for patients."

Electronic health records help reduce errors that result in costly hospitalizations or emergency room visits, and minimize unnecessary duplicate tests, he said.

"When you look at it from that perspective, in a well-coordinated care cycle, we believe that it will yield significant cost efficiencies."

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