David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P.
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Dear Dr. Blumenthal,
I was honored to receive a personal email from you today. However, after reading it, I conclude that you must have intended to send this email to Judith Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems.
I really liked what you said about working toward interoperability:
The HITECH Act calls for the “development of a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information and that…promotes a more effective marketplace, greater competition…[and] increased consumer choice” among other goals. (Section 3001(b)) This means we cannot support arrangements that restrict the secure, private exchange of information required for patient care across provider or network boundaries. Some of these arrangements may improve care for those inside their walls. But ultimately, they have the potential to carve the nation up into disconnected silos of information, and thus, to undermine the vision of a secure, interoperable, nationwide health information infrastructure, which the law requires us to establish. Consumers, patients and their caretakers should never feel locked into a single health system or exchange arrangement because it does not permit or encourage the sharing of information.
So you will probably just need to resend your email…
Vince
Vince, your blog has been hacked. Glen Tullman is posting on it :)
How about ALL the major vendors? And the large hospital systems, for that matter, which don’t WANT these systems to be interoperable, so as to have a captive patient population?
Dr. Bev, In light of Judy Faulker’s continuing recent comments defending Epic’s operational and business model, I assumed Dr. Blumenthal’s note meant to single her out as either deaf or just thick :)
I certainly have no objections to Dr. Blumenthal sending his note to the others you reference, but that’s up to him. You might mention it to him.
I also certainly did not mean to imply that Epic is the only foot dragger in the crowd, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I believe they’re deserving of special mention.
Why Epic more than Cerner? Aren’t they about the same size and about equally uninterested in having data in their systems standardized enough to easily share?
I’m with Bev MD. Maybe Epic is the biggest of the bad players, but not by much and when you include the interests of health systems they collectively overwhelm the interests of EHR vendors, and are a bigger problem.
Actually, Epic is the only vendor/software that allows any organization live on the Epic software to seamlessly exchange information = Care Everywhere. This is today, next will be Epic’s ability to share information with other vendor’s software using HL7’s Clinical Documentation Standard (CDS) – assuming States don’t have laws preventing the technology and organizations can come to legal agreements.
http://wistechnology.com/articles/6002/
and
http://www.iienet2.org/uploadedfiles/SHS_Community/Resources/Linking%20Records%20from%20Separate%20EHRs%20Becomes%20a%20Reality.pdf
her company is successful because they are extremely focused on “powering patient centric solutions.” Her motto is ” You have to focus, know what your business is and stick to it.”
i think she is just a lil bit vain.