[LINK] Electronic medical records: why we should seek a second

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmm ...

They're just protecting their own, Jan ... In much the same way as every other participant in the various eHealth projects over the last 20 years have done. The bottom line is that until all the self interest and mendaciousness disappears eHealth will rest comfortably on the back burner and nothing will be done.

My prediction for 2012 (and 2013 to 2021) is that there will be no Great Leap Forward in digitalising our medical professions, infrastructure, industries or any peripheral fields.

Then again, I'm a nasty cynical old sod ...

Sent from my iPad
---
On 21/12/2011, at 10:07 AM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at melbpc.org.au> wrote:

> At 08:47 PM 20/12/2011, Frank O'Connor wrote:
>> Nah ... Far better to keep raising objections, stop the show and 
>> stave off the day when eHealth becomes a reality .. whilst 
>> continuing to feed insatiably at the public trough.
> 
> It's a bigger problem than that, Frank. I just spent *another* hour 
> late last night reviewing another submission (what count are we up 
> to, Roger?) about this abysmal project. It's a monster of poor 
> project management, poor governance, poor risk analysis and 
> mitigation, poor consultation, and horrible design. Gee, you might 
> say, tell us what you really think!
> 
> If the govt is going to foist this upon the public, at an unknown, 
> but well underestimated cost (my bet was $2-3 billion dollars MINIMUM 
> for it to work), then it should be done right. They (Nehta and the 
> Dept of Health and Aging who are involved in this) don't seem to 
> understand the complexity of the system, the data legacy issues, the 
> local implementation costs, the information flow problems, the human 
> trust factors, the medico-legal liability problems, not to mention 
> the privacy and other even greater major RISK problems, despite the 
> same messages being provided over and over and over, WITH the 
> accompanying research to back up the criticisms.
> 
> Their solution in the proposed legislation? Remove liability by the 
> government and their agencies if anything happens as a result of 
> reliance on the PCEHR, so the patient and their families and possibly 
> the health provider (doctor) carry the can. It is a joke! If you were 
> a professional with any risk sense, would you take that on? I sure wouldn't.
> 
> This isn't a case of feeding from the trough by the current 
> interests. It's a case of people making decisions from a bureaucratic 
> perspective without the necessary background and skills in designing 
> a functional system of this scope and size and doing it for life and 
> death of real people. The IT project during the Howard govt that fell 
> in a heap is a row boat compared to this Titanic.
> 
> Jan
> 
> 
> 
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
> 
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
> 
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