By John Ballard
I've been wanting to put together a health care reform post but the news has been so bad lately I haven't had much with which to work.
Today's post from Maggie Mahar is a breath of fresh air.
At last, someone is announcing a Health Information Technology (HIT) initiative that opens the door to efficient, secure IT systems that will be able to talk to each other nationwide. At some point in the not-too-distant future, if you live in Pennsylvania and are in a terrible car accident in California, a Kaiser hospital on the West Coast will be able to tap into your medical records at Geisinger and capture information about your medical history, allergies to certain medications, and other critical information in less than a minute.
Already, thanks to the steps that Kaiser Permanente in California has taken, if you live in the San Diego area, are admitted to a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital, and visit your Kaiser physician when you are discharged, with your permission, he can view your VA records, finding all of the information he needs about results from tests done at the VA hospital, what drugs VA doctors prescribed, and recommendations for follow-up treatment.
Who is finally creating a model that could serve as a prototype for a rational HIT system nationwide?
Our government in Washington? Well, no. When the electronic medical record (EMR) revolution began, politicians in Washington decided to leave it to �the market to decide� how to implement Health IT. In our current system, for-profit vendors compete for business, and hospitals and doctors have wound up with a hodge-podge of systems that cannot communicate with each other. In some hospitals, the IT in the ER isn�t able to talk to a department on the third floor.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[...] five of the nation�s most innovative non-profit health systems�Geisinger Health System (Pennsylvania ), Kaiser Permanente (California ), Intermountain Healthcare (Utah ), Group Health Cooperative (Washington) and the Mayo Clinics in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona�have just announced that they have joined together to create the Care Connectivity Consortium. They are linking their IT systems so that they can send electronic medical records to each other; the first data exchange is scheduled to happen next year. Suddenly, millions of patients will find themselves in the 21st century�s �medical information age.� Although the five are located in different parts of the country, they treat patients from all 50 states.
[...] �Learning together and talking together��these non-profit groups are able to lead because instead of competing with each other, they have been sharing information. As the Affordable Care Act recognizes, we will be able to lower costs and lift quality only if those who provide and distribute care stop vying for market share, and begin collaborating. Over time, newly formed accountable care organizations are likely to join the Consortium�s network, along with other hospitals and physician groups.
[...] It�s worth noting that these five organizations did not wait for financial incentives before beginning the task of coordinating their systems. They are funding the Consortium themselves. Going forward, small groups that lack their resources will be able to benefit from their trail-blazing work.
The post is much longer but that's the thrust of what she says. I am sooo ready to hear something positive about health care.
The GOP/Ryan Medicare-kill proposal is too ugly for words. I have deliberately avoided commenting about it because I have no prose adequate to explain how bad it is. Besides, readers at this site are already in the choir.
She ends on this positive note:
Conservative dreams of killing Medicare while strangling rational reform are just that�their dreams, our nightmares�but not likely to become reality. Out there, in communities throughout the country, our health care system is beginning to transform itself, from within. This is not happening everywhere. And even in places where reformers are committed, they will not always be successful.
But, as Cochran says, �we�re making a dent.� And this is just the beginning.
Sure, sure, sure,
ReplyDeleteI am just convinced that the major concern of medical professionals is whether or not they can simply ask you if you are too sensitive to this or that medication.
But some how, after visiting a hospital or 2, they seemed to be were mostly concerned if I could pay or not, if I had sued a provider in the past, If the condition I was visiting them for was investigated by others and deemed incurable.
Frankly, I tell my doctor what I want him to know. I do not want him dismissing me because the last doctor did. I do not want him passing me on to another or not accepting me as a patient at all, because I sued my last doctor.
I do not want decisions I made as a very young man, to limit my choices as an adult. I had depression many years ago, and several doctors have discounted illnesses/symptoms today because they say that sometimes these complaints are depression related.
Sometimes doctors ignorance can work in the patients favor.
...they say that sometimes these complaints are depression related.
ReplyDeleteFrom the rest of your post it looks to me like they were correct. But I'm not a medical professional so you should get another opinion.
How about this? I don't want anyone seeing my medical history except my GP. Yes it's important for situations like the car accident. But I don't want the community college dropout EMT having access to my medical information "because there might be important information he needs to save my life". Sorry, I just don't trust anyone with that kind of power.
ReplyDeleteThe American taxpayer has already paid hundreds of billions of dollars to digitize the publics health records to benefit the insurance companies, just like we are paying for the banks mistakes, we are paying for airline security, we are paying to help the Jews steal the Palestinian lands, we are paying to subsidize corporations, agribusiness, defense contractors, pharmacutical companies. We are paying government to represent us and then they peddle their influence to the highest bidder, America cannot sustain this level of corruption.
ReplyDeleteThank you , Charles. I can add little.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks privacy is sacrosanct in today's world is living in a fool's paradise. Your medical/insurance and credit/banking databases are perfect examples.
The sooner we get a biometric national ID card the sooner we will get a handle on fraud an abuse both public and private that costs everyone. Medical data is just another piece of the puzzle.
They should open-source this as much as possible. It is the best way to get quality and especially quality security. Sounds counterintuitive, but this has proven out.
ReplyDeleteI'll believe real progress has been made when I see HR676 resurrected and enacted.
ReplyDeleteOur current "health care" system is corrupt, obsolete, immoral, and EVIL, as are the parasitic drug and health insurance racketeers.
We're already paying about three times the amount we could be spending on single-payer universal health care for EVERYONE, but not getting it.
It's way past time to join the 21st century and the rest of the developed world.