Barbara Duck in her blog “The Medical Quack” interviews Dr. Hamlaka, the outgoing CIO of the Harvard Medical School. He along with Sean Nolan have said, and why It's time to take a break with a Health IT-Interview with Dr. Halamka and why he's stepping down as Harvard Medical CIO-there's too much on the plate tellilng ONC to ‘take a vacation’
PLEASE, TAKE A BREAK!
JUST STOP TALKING FOR AWHILE AND LET US IMPLEMENT STUFF.
My thought on this is “sure”. These federal employees are PAID to generate paperwork. Your tax dollars and mine are caught up in this process. Their ‘quarterly assessments” depend upon the volume of bureaucratic edits, they produce. If they stop their job is in jeopardy. It is a self-propagating process at work in all areas of government unless Congress stops their funding.
“ I’ve spoken at some length about my enthusiasm for the current leadership at HHS and ONC. President Obama has both directly and indirectly engaged some really gifted individuals to help us address healthcare challenges through the use of information technology --- which is awesome. In particular, folks like Aneesh Chopra, Todd Park and Farzad Mostashari have brought the Internet to healthcare (or perhaps more accurately, healthcare to the Internet), and have convened some super-effective public/private groups to collaborate on specific issues with real success. I’ve had the good fortune to participate in a few of these, and it’s been some of the most rewarding work of my career.
Why stop now? I think the answer is increasingly clear. Between Meaningful Use Stage 1, the Direct Project and theHealth Data Initiative, government has kicked industry out of a funk it’s been in for the previous decade, and we’re seeing a ton of really exciting and positive innovation. But nobody, and certainly not ONC, knows at a detailed level how to turn that innovation into ubiquitous market reality. What we need now is a period of implementation, competition and iteration to figure out how to deliver on the promise.
What we need now is time for the system to work, partnerships to form, software to be upgraded in production systems, ideas to be tested, consumers to choose what to buy and what not to buy.
I’m not asking for the pace of innovation to slow down --- capitalism takes care of that just fine (even in healthcare, when the conditions are right). I’m asking for the government to slow down … recognize that ONC has found an incredible recipe to guide progress, but that it will only keep working if used strategically.”
Medical Quack interviews Dr. Hamlaka
