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Opportunity for HIT Vendors to Do Good

Yesterday, I found an email from Health and Human Services (HHS) in my inbox highlighting a new initiative where the “Obama Administration and Text4Baby join forces to connect pregnant women and children to health coverage and information”. The goal of this partnership is “to promote enrollment in both Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)”. Having more babies and children obtain insurance coverage is obviously a worthy endeavor, and if it can be accomplished by simply sending informative text messages to pregnant women, even better. Of course having insurance coverage doesn’t always translate into having access to an actual doctor, particularly for Medicaid enrollees. In an unrelated coincidental turn of events, it just so happened that I have had the recent opportunity to spend time with large numbers of Pediatric practices, most of which were small independent practices in middle-class suburban areas. The main goal of these conversations was to elicit doctors’...

Big Bad Legacy EHR Products

IBM "cloud" computing - circa 1975 There is no self-respecting innovator in Health Information Technology (HIT) who has not spoken or written about the horrific state of Legacy EHR products, which are slowly but surely being deployed in more and more health care facilities as a result of Meaningful Use incentives and changing reimbursement models. A couple of months ago I saw an EMR in a small practice. They’ve been using it for 15 years and it was a DOS based system with the ubiquitous neon green text glaring on a black and sometimes blue background. Aha! That must be a Legacy EMR, and sure enough the doctor was looking to replace it with a more modern product, but which one should he get now? After all, the last thing you’d want is to have him buy yet another Legacy EMR. According to dictionary.com , a Legacy system is a “computer system or application program which continues to be used because of the cost of replacing or redesigning it and often despite its poor competitiv...

Remembrance of Docs Past

It was 10 AM and the unmarked glass door was locked. A woman in a brightly colored dress with a big smile on her face waved from inside, disappeared for a brief moment and returned with a key, unlocked the door and welcomed us to Dr. Elliott’s brand new solo practice. The small rooms were brightly lit, sparsely furnished and smelled of fresh paint. There were two elderly patients in the waiting room and one empty chair. In the next room there was a desk with a big monitor, a new printer and lots of framed pictures of happy people holding little children in their arms. Unpacked boxes and crates were stacked up in one corner and across from it the exam room door was closed. Dr. Elliott was with a patient. Mrs. Elliott, the lady with the brightly colored dress, produced a couple of extra chairs from thin air and told us all about the happy people and the little children in the framed photos, while answering phones, making appointments, checking authorizations, printing all sorts of papers...

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