Comments on: News 7/5/07

By: Dogofwar

Dogofwar — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:17:01 +0000

“Per Smalltown CIO’s comment that the government is messing them up, well, what doesn’t the government mess up?”

So how exactly has the government messed up RHIOs?

By sponsoring a group to harmonize standards (led by Dr. Halamka no less)?
By sponsoring a group to look at privacy and security laws?sponsoring prototypes?
By creating loopholes in Stark law for HIT?

If anything, in my opinion, the gov’t hasn’t done ENOUGH.

By: Egon Spenglor

Egon Spenglor — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 23:30:02 +0000

Contrary to the notion that RHIOs are fizzling, they are booming all over the country. Per Smalltown CIO’s comment that the government is messing them up, well, what doesn’t the government mess up? RHIOs seem to be doing fine otherwise, with many springing up each month. So perhaps the issue with Healthvision isn’t a lack of marketplace, but rather an inability for them to effectively address it.

By: Dogofwar

Dogofwar — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:09:15 +0000

We’re in agreement on the need for national standards. What I was referring to was the money and attention spent on prototyping the national network…when there are a paucity of EMRs implemented (or community/regional exchanges to feed it). Cart before the horse, even though this was only ~$18M.

Believe me that there’s plenty of work to do – as a community – to establish the conditions for health information exchange before any IT systems are built…perhaps including (as a community) coming up with a plan/guidelines for EMR/EHR implementation and interoperability for the various providers in the community…. It’s not either implement an EMR or participate in a RHIO (in fact, it could/should be for some providers: implement an EMR BY participating in a RHIO).

I disagree that there’s been too much money thrown at health information exchange/RHIOs to date. Cooperating – for the good of the patient – across providers in a community is oftentimes an un-natural act…and it won’t happen on its own. And interoperability (i.e. for a patient’s different providers in a community to have more complete information for a patient, God forbid) won’t magically happen if each of the provders in a community takes the position that HIT is only inside their four walls.

By: SmallTownCIO

SmallTownCIO — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 17:23:09 +0000

Dogofwar – My point is that if the standards are being developed as you indicated (and I agree), then why fund a variety of other RHIO initiatives that are using home-grown standards? In actuality, I believe the standards SHOULD be on the national level. Community-based RHIO initatives can be productive, but because they almost certainly rely on self-developed standards, they shouldn’t be undertaken at the expense of putting good HIT technology into facilities that still need it (e.g. rural healthcare). It isn’t good enough to say we need information exchange – we all agree on that. But timing is everything – concentrate on the national standards and in the mean time, lets use our resources to put quality HIT into facilities that still need it.

By: B2B-John

B2B-John — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:06:27 +0000

Re: GE Healthcare Reorg

It is standard practice at GE to move execs around giving them exposure to the various operations under their control. Would be cautious to not read too much into any changes occurring within the executive ranks of their healthcare division.