Comments on: Not To Beat A Dead Horse…

By: Peter Beck

Peter Beck — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:27:00 +0000

I’m afraid of what it’ll look like, if and when the shift to EHR becomes obviously inevitable.

I’m sure folks were scrabbling to get into the Ark when the rains came down…

By: John Lynn

John Lynn — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:04:17 +0000

I love your optimism about EHR. You definitely make some interesting points. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing the same shift in doctors towards EHR. Certainly interest in EHR has never been higher. However, I still haven’t seen the dramatic shift in doctors actually implementing an EHR or even doing significant things to get ready.

By: Peter Beck

Peter Beck — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:56:40 +0000

Those are great points, Jack.

Who gets to pick the “set points” that will reshape the industry? Especially when statistics has long been recognized (in the wrong hands) as The Left Hand Of The Devil?

But we gotta start somewhere. The status quo can’t continue, or years from now, we’ll be screaming about a financial collapse that will make the Wall Street debacle look like a blessed blip in the market.

Really basic criteria are pretty clear. If you treat diabetic folks, no one argues their HbA1c’s should be under 7.0, and preferably 6.5. If your patients don’t want strokes, heart attacks, kidney or congestive heart failure, they really should have blood pressures under 140/90. If you’re a payer, and Doctor J gets his patients from train wreck to a defined level of wellness in 6 weeks for $450, and Doctor X does the same in 30 weeks for $1400, you may want more of your other docs calling Dr. J for pointers.

Will there be mitigating factors? You bet. But we have got to start looking at our numbers, and improving our outcomes through diligent effort. It can even be us as providers doing the numerical analysis, and defining for ourselves what measures we want to track and improve — one would hope.

By: Dr Jack

Dr Jack — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:00:38 +0000

Here’s the thing that I believe is the hardest part. How do you determine what truly works? As a professor, I educate about research review – bottom-line research can be slanted to any view (population control, research design). Evidence based research has been plagued by this problem as well as illogical conclusions – ask any PT in an HMO who is… Read More now simply handing out exercises because of insurer driven evidence based research design to devalue modalities. I feel that we will not end up with the best treatments; just the ones that cost less.
Hopefully, they truly address this issue with a good heart and not only a calculator.