Comments for HIStalk

Comment on Dr. Sam 5/23/12 by John Lynn

John Lynn — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:53:26 +0000

It’s interesting you compare online dating with connecting with a doctor online. In many cases I had a better experience with someone online than I did once I actually met them. I think the same could likely be true in healthcare. Many of the annoyances of an office visit could be avoided if the care was done electronically and possibly asynchronously on occasion.

Of course, I’m not saying that this should be the only form of care. Just that there are advantages and disadvantages both ways and so we should embrace both the in person and electronic forms of care.

Comment on Dr. Sam 5/23/12 by Tim Carney

Tim Carney — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:52:43 +0000

Sam,
How are you my old friend? Last time I saw you we were singing with the Blues Brothers at the House of Blues in Orlando with the Eclipsys crew. I hope your band is still rocking. I agree with your take on e-medicine. Even though we can drive costs out of the system and improve throughput with what we do we should not lose sight of the human factor involved in the clinician/patient relationship.

Tim Carney
Vice President
Sungard Data Systems

Comment on News 5/23/12 by JFM

JFM — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:26:11 +0000

Children’s Hospital of Boston just changed their name a week ago – not surprised about the confusion:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-05-17/news/31751670_1_hospital-officials-first-change-boston-globe

Comment on News 5/23/12 by Public Defender

Public Defender — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:58:42 +0000

“The only sure thing is that it will be late, over budget, and politicized.”

Oh, dear. Non-federal EHR implementations are never later, over budget and politicized. Had we only known.

Comment on News 5/23/12 by Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:32:24 +0000

Hey, Historian, do you really mean that *all* EHR outages should be reported?

- What’s an outage? Is it at a specific workstation or an entire system? If it’s somewhere in between, where?

- Does a podiatrist’s EHR need to be reported? How about a family practice? How about a pathologist? How high down the acute/deadly visit chain do we go?

- How long does an EHR have to be “down” for it to be reportable? 30 seconds? 10 minutes?

- Does the entire EHR have to be down to be reported or just part? Which parts? What if the third-party embedded eRX is down, but the rest is OK? What if it’s just, say, the ARRA mandated WWW-based patient educational handouts?

- What happens if someone doesn’t report? Who owns this data? Where does it go?

I could go on. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be looking for a relationship between our dependence on EHRs and clinical quality (below the threshold of death), but that’s a broaaaad brushstroke you paint.