Feeling the Heat ?
During the past year or I have been reading about the change being made to the NHS, and the privatization as well as de-constructing it’s bureaucracy to allow more local control and administration..
So what was this opening ceremony about how wonderful the NHS is? Certainly it did honor the thousands of health care professionals,nurses, and physicians who work in the setting of the NHS. It also shamefully ignored the international theme of past Olympics and inappropriate for the setting, although it was masterfully done. I don’t want my humble opinion overshadowing the event itself. The two most notable events were James Bond and Queen Elizabeth sky diving to the opening ceremony. Mr. Bean also added a symphonic note to the ceremonies. No one can fault the Brits for their ‘dry humor’. It eclipsed G.W.H. Bush and his sky-diving antics for several birthdays.
This may have been staged to honor the NHS workers, but it came across as a politically inspired, and government funded advertisement, for who? Was this a message to the United States for Donald Berwick’s acclaim for socialized medicine?
They have had this system for decades, it’s taken that long to analyze it’s worth, and that long to make a change. It’s going to take some time to analyze the internal workings of NHS to find out how they use outcome studies, assess quality of care and other metrics. (do they have meaningful use for their electronic health record system?)
Does our current ‘acting head of CMS participate in social media to effect openness and transparency (a ‘buzzword’) for President Obama. It would be far more effective and efficient to use social media rather than the hierarchy of titles, distant meetings by health consultants and the multiplicity of meetings, mostly held in the Washington, D.C. area at one end of our large country.
Most physicians can ill afford the time lost to go to a distant meeting, that does not offer CME. There is no reason whatsoever that HHS cannot schedule meaningful webinars and links to information about the processes.
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