Good News

Mike Leavitt, the head of HHS announced the privatization of the AHIC group. He also announced the steady increase in the number of EMR vendors who are complying with, and becoming certified by CCHIT. This is no small accomplishment because it requires a substantial fee, for the smaller vendors. According to Leavitt about 75% of EMR vendors are now CCHIT certified....

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What didn't Occur in 2007!

As 2008 begins I started out to clean house. This included defragmenting my hard drive, checking on my windows updates, deleting about 1 GB of uneeded files, running my AV program, anti-spam program, tuning my router, checking my download speeds, and other mundane tasks. I also updated my list of goals for 2008 and beyond. Looking back on 2007 and further beyond I realized a great number of things had not occurred. 1.Universal Health Care. Except for Massachussetts, had not occured. 2. The number of uninsured  had not decreased. 3. There still was no worldwide epidemic of SARS virus. The pandemic event that was predicted to "thin" the human population still lurks. 4. RHIOs had a very dismal year. 5. Adoption of EMR has failed to "take off" as predicted. 5. CMS and Social Security had...

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Merry Go Round or Roller Coaster??

Happy New Year to all. 2007 was a year of up and downs for RHIOs and EMRs in the United States. A small number of RHIOs have made some progress and some group practices and hospitals have adopted or are moving toward  EMRs.  Many RHIO efforts have stalled due to lack of stakeholder enthusiasm. Analysts like to point out how far behind the U.S. lags in EMR implementation.  Their statistics are flawed and reveals how statistics can be manipulated to prove almost anything. First of all European nations have healthcare systems which are much more socialized and run by central governments.. If one analyzes their EMRs, they are focused on complications, adverse reactions and limited to primary care. This article from Health affairs...

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