I decided to post my Halloween 2006 blogpost here, again. I brought it forward from my original iteration, RiversideHealth
Friday, November 03, 2006
Halloween and RHIOs
Several nights ago we participated in the annual ritual of door to door "trick or treating".
It seemed to me there are some analogies between Halloween night and RHIOs.
We are all looking for some "treats" without being "tricked". Some of the takers would shove their whole hand enthusiastically into the candy barrel and come out with a fistful of treats, while some would gingerly pick out one. My wife cautioned me to hand them out one at a time or we would soon run out. The same can be said about enthusiasm for RHIOs. Some are enthusiastic takers, and givers, others are reticent about their choice(s). One thing was for sure, I had to go out and replenish the barrel several times.
We had just moved into a new family neighborhood, and discovered there were literally thousands of children coming to our door. Having been on the far side of the half century mark for some time, we had recently been living in the relative quiet and senior demographics of the desert. There were wonderful fairies, pumpkins, spidermen, supermen, fantastic fours, and even a few dated ninja turtles, coming to our door that evening. In the desert we were lucky if we saw one or two. The future of our country abounds in Riverside neighborhoods.
It came to me that we are not building health IT and/or RHIOs for ourselves but for our children. How critical this need is demonstrated by recent articles about outsourcing not only transcription services but actual health care delivery, such as surgery, and diagnostic testing where these services can be obtained for 10% of what it costs in the United States. A bit shameful for us.
Physicians are now faced with the annual adversarial role with CMS, and it appears, as usual that our fees will be slashed 5.7% on the average. If you do the math, this makes RHIOs and EHRs even more unlikely.
Then there is legislation pending that would mandate EMRs with funding from Congress through a variety of sources. Which is the trick, and what is the treat?
As for me, give me those
little foil wrapped chocolate balls.
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