Jaundiced View

Quote of the day: Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. - Peter De Vries   By now most readers who come to my blog realize they "don't always get what you waahnt" (Mick Jaeger), and " you can't get noosaatisfaaction".  You try and you try....but. You probably get my drift here. When I think about today's medical practice I often drift off into days long gone by, the Doobie Brothers, Chambers Brothers, amongst others.  Perhaps I like the fantasia of it all....much more pleasant than the daily self importance of dealing with absolute garbage in my daily practice.  The good thing is almost all of it is automatic on my part.  My favorite thing is now listening to my patients ,  not so much about their disease state, but about their lives.  I usually...

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Butterfly Effect

Quote of the day: You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. - Albert Einstein   Those of you who are physicists or students of chaos theory know what the butterfly effect is.  This is a theory that someone turning on a fan in Brazil can cause a domino effect which causes a tornado in Kansas. It can be applied to politics, weather-forcasting, and even health care and health care policy. It is the law of unintended consequences......a coconut falling off a tree in Jamaica causing a series of earthquakes in California. Few forsaw...

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Reading Below the first Blog Entry

Like most things , blog readers have short attention spans. How many of you read beyond the first or second entry. I thought I would summarize a few items that are posted on the left hand side of the blog, or you can read it here. (have I lost you already?) This blog is meant to "stimulate" discussion about all things regarding health care changes.  I invite readers to comment. Anyone who would like to write a guest entry may contact me directly at gmlevinmd123@hotmail.com . You may notice I have a few blog links down the left hand side of my blog.  I rarely have my coffee in the AM without obsessing over Surgeon's Blog, Medinnovation, Panda Bear, Kevin MD, Edwin Leap and at time Health Care Blog. If I am in the mood to be nauseated I will read "Leavitt's Blog"  This is...

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The Golden Rule

"He who has the gold, rules" Consumer Directed Health Care (CDHR) is beginning to make major intrusions and fund IT.  CALPERS is acting on behalf of it's employees by directing it's pension fund to  invest in Health IT. Beyond that they are directing their insurers to do the same, following their lead.  No doubt CALPERS has enormous purchasing power in the market place.! California Retirement Fund Backs Statewide Health Data Exchange The California Public Employees' Retirement System -- which serves 1.2 million state and local employees, retirees and dependents -- has endorsed and will support the California Regional Health Information Organization's statewide health information exchange, called CalRHIO, Health Data Management...

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Health Train Express version upgrade

Health Train and it's affiliated VARs, Independent software vendors, all levels of the federal government, state governments, DEA,FDA,CMS,PMS,DOD,IHS, INS,FBI, CIA VA,CINCPAC, CINCUS, BBC, VFW, announce the introduction of  Web 2.1a and Health 2.1a .  We will no longer support ver 2.0 despite the petition signed by one health care provider and 100,000 HIT geeks.  Health 2.1a is not backward compatible with Health 2.0 and users may find that certain drivers of health care (illness, chest pain,rashes, sniffles, and other unknown issues) may not be compatible with Health 2.1a. (see KB article 45983-5098-5092-234953098a)  Please be patient, at times our server is under very heavy load due to sharing space with HALO and Microsoft Live. We are looking for charitable donations...

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HIMSS VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

 HIMSS VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM   Today I am attending the HIMSS Conference from my easy chair at home.  Otherwise the lack of travel challenges, expense and loss of time away from your primary office (which sometimes are enjoyable as a distraction from the hum-ho drone of daily practice life. This "Second Life" approach to dissemination of knowledge gives the user a very real appearance of a "symposium" duplicated in a virtual world over the internet, one of the best applications of Web 2.0 Jonathan Bush, CEO  AthenaHealth, gave a very articulate and understandable view of the conundrum that doctors and healthcare face in adopting HIT.  Mr Bush correctly states it is like hitting a moving target that not only changes direction, and  speed, but enters new dimensions. ...

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STREET DOC

Jay Parkinson MD practices family medicine and pediatrics in Williamsburg,Brookly, N.Y.  His approach to health information exchange has been to use it to revolutionize medical practice using commonly available software and special proprietary software to increase information to patients that most physicians leave to their staff, at considerable expense. Judging from the comments on his web site, this has produced commentary ranging from "ridiculous" to "way to go Jay" Young physicians are not thoroughly indoctrinated in the "business of medicine"  They are idealistic and want to transform medical practice.  Some of us "older folks"  (myself excluded) have systems set up that we have become comfortable using, even if they don't work as well as we might think.  It's...

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The Impact of HIT in 2018

Quote of the Day:When you come to a fork in the road...take it.--Yogi Berra   In my search across the galaxy for the future of health information technology, I came across my son's XBOX 360 and found some relevant video posted on "Placebo Journal", and thank you to blogger  kevin.md Here it is Part I, A Medical Odyssey   Part II....The Next Day  ...

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Barriers to Health Information Exchange

Quote of the Day:Everything that can be invented has been invented.--Charles H. Duell   In this column I often write about promoting health information exchange. In all cases, however, we must comply with HIPAA and place barriers for confidentiality and privacy to protect patients from unauthorized access to their health records without proper authorization. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is an expansive set of rules to privacy for patient information.  The lesser known aspects of it may be largely unknown by physicians.  I came across a survey of dentists which had some interesting information, although not all aspects apply to medical offices. It is available for a full read at:Dental Survey...

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More on Health Information Exchanges

Although the advent of the RHIO as a business structure for the development of  Health Information Exchanges has largely failed to do what it was intended to do, the motivation for HIE will largely be driven by  CMS mandates and well as quality and safety concerns.  (HealthDay News) -- "From 2004 through 2006, patient safety errors resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths of U.S. Medicare patients and cost the Medicare program $8.8 billion, according to the fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study This analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records, released April 8 by HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization, found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were, on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors...

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Consumer Health Information Exchange

We as health care providers, hospitals, laboratories, emergency departments and others view health information and data exchange through a narrow prism from our side of the health care system. Patients (consumers) also have begun to form their own virtual world of support groups and education amongst themselves. For years there have been patient oriented support groups and organizations. Web 2.0 now has some very innovative offerings for patients. Healing in Community Online offers a "second life" aspect to these interchanges of support and education.  It's construct is much like the real world, with provider offices, laboratories, hospitals, and all the usual everyday accoutrements of healthcare. Diabetes Mine offers a wealth of patient oriented commentary for diabetics. Patients Like...

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Innovation

Quote of the Day:If you really want to do something, you will find a way. If you don't, you will find an excuse.--Anonymous   Clinicians each day face innovation, like it or not. It traverses our day from the hospital to our office and to our business engines. Continuing medical education, and staff training are a key methodology of "technology transfer" from the boiler-rooms of academia and practice management gurus. We are all involved in some aspect of the process, the rising impact of consumerism, monitoring of outcomes, performance measures, reimbursement based upon compliance with reporting these metrics, and the influx of information technology. The past three years as a health informatics researcher, I have devoted much time by interviewing vendors and the different approaches...

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