The serious lack of infrastructure to support an expansive and meaningful ACO strategy is missing from the healthcare technology toolkit. Some may view this as a non critical issue but with so many organizations engaged in some form of ACO activity, we have to ask, “Have we begged the question?” It seems to me we […]
The Dash to ACOs Is Headed For a Brick Wall
Federal health care reform has generated immense interest in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). In theory, improved quality and reduced cost will be gleaned by bundled payment of a health system and the physician. To attain this, however, and to improve quality and reduce cost, there will have to be good communication and a strong relationship, […]
Is Self-Certifying the Path to Tranquility?
As Lao Tzu, the father of Taoism once said “The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” When I first read the announcement from CCHIT in November that they had a process for Hospitals to self certify their EHR Environment for Meaningful Use, I was thrown back to ancient eastern philosophy […]
Forget Everything You Know About Healthcare Information Systems
Oscar Wilde once wrote that “Everything popular is wrong,” and I think that time has come for healthcare information systems. Now, granted Health information technology (HIT) has come a long way from its infancy as a means to produce a bill. As the use of EHRs expanded beyond basic clinical information and began to encompass […]
A Physics Lesson for Healthcare
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” Martin Luther King once said. The Healthcare delivery system is on the verge of change. It will take hard work from all of us to us to make it happen. I like to look at it terms of structure and change. Structure being the underlying construct of the healthcare system and change the process by which we struggle to manifest a new delivery model. The federal Government has outlined a structure.