HEALTHY ONLINE

I like reading Dr. Kevin Pho’s blog . I read, or at the very least scan, his diverse collection of essays every day. The posts themselves are mostly good, but I like reading the comments section more, and most of all I like the anonymous comments, because those are rare insights into how regular, everyday doctors think. I read Health Affairs and JAMA and NEJM and the New York Times to figure out what “thought leaders” say, and medical associations’ websites for “leadership” messaging. And guess what? The anonymous, and sometimes not so anonymous, opinions of the rank and file are diametrically opposed to official party lines. Of course, most doctors don’t read or comment on blogs, don’t speak at conferences and don’t write opinion pieces for mass media outlets. Over the years, I spoke with many members of the silent majority, not a representative sample by any means, but a good indicator that anonymous commenters are closer to being representative of popular opinion than their much mor...

I was reading the popular HIStalk health IT news/opinion site the other day when I ran into a blurb stating that beginning in 2014, a new “North Carolina law requires hospitals with EHRs to connect to the state’s HIE and submit data on services paid for with Medicaid funds”. For the uninitiated, HIE stands for Health Information Exchange, and in this context it refers to a federally funded organization whose mission is to facilitate clinical information exchange in the State. There are similar organizations in most every State, funded back in 2009, alongside Meaningful Use and other shovel ready economic stimulus activities, through the ARRA and its HITECH Act. The noble goal of HIE organizations everywhere is to improve care for patients by simplifying interoperability between disparate EHR technologies, allowing clinicians timely access to relevant, up-to-date medical information at the point of care. It makes perfect sense that North Carolina would like to “nudge” hospitals into sh...