Will physicians use an EMR? Will healthcare use an EHR? Will patients use a PHR? And will these forms of digital health records be massively adopted?
Moving from a paper to a digital record brings issues of interoperability and distinguishability. In a paper world, form, presentation and content have been understood for thousands of year. Paper [...]
If this equation has some validity, then the complexity of the health cloud may be inferred from the number of potential exchange transactions. Here the HIE (exchange transactions) term, a surrogate measure, will be replaced by interoperability. The equation is reformulated as:
Complexity = Entities × xHRs1 × Interoperability
In terms of a complexity scale, the lowest [...]
Patient X was contacted by his personal physician yesterday, he reports that his potassium is high. Patient Y is on three medications: the diabetes one, the blood pressure one and the cholesterol one. Patient Z has been vomiting and urinating blood for months and has had several tests performed with unknown results. These are common [...]
Excellent essay by Welch:
Both presidential candidates need to challenge the conventional wisdom about preventive medicine. They should ask whether the path to a healthy society is the one that turns those who are well into patients anxious about their future. They should inquire whether more diagnoses will lead to more unnecessary treatment. And they should [...]
In the ER, when you hear an incoming paramedic unit give report on the phone/radio and the paramedic is barely able to reframe from laughing—something is up. Patient arrives via ambulance with a complaint of being 7 ½ years pregnant. Our pregnancy test is negative. Her response is, “they’re always negative.” Have you seen your [...]
Thirty year old female has heavy shelving fall on top of head causing a scalp laceration. Due to ER crowding, the patient is seen rapidly by the physician–in–triage and has CT head and neck ordered. She is then placed in the waiting room for two hours, without a cervical collar, waiting for an exam room.
Should [...]
Stark introduces Health–e Information Technology Act: bill sets deadline for standards for HIT system developments, creates incentives for adoption, and includes strong rules for privacy protection
Clear Standards and Deadlines to Spur Development of Health IT Systems
Codifies the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT, present) within the Department of Health and Human [...]
A variation on Field of Dreams: if funded, it will happen; hospital surge capacity seems relatively immune to $4B surge in federal spending. Our national health system is a crisis waiting to happen. When you consider that most notions of universal healthcare in the US have a component of market competition, it is hard to [...]
Bell’s palsy—for a child, the loss is immeasurable.
Traveling for Care—in the U.S.
Some employers are looking to take advantage of geographical variations in the quality and cost of health care within the U.S., while others are leveraging deals they’ve struck with foreign hospitals in order to secure better rates with U.S. hospitals that are eager to keep American patients here. Most of the [...]
