November 2009 - EHR: How difficult without the correct strategy

So, I’m watching the Alabama Auburn game and it suddenly strikes me, there are probably a lot of people trying to understand what it is a consultant does that we can’t do for ourselves. For those who have a life, those who missed the game, Alabama entered the game undefeated and had a good chance to...

I met last week with a number of 1st Year MBA students who have a consulting club to help them figure out if they are suited for this noblest of all professions–supposedly the second oldest profession. “How can you tell if you’ll be any good at it?” They asked. As far as I can...

May I take you on a tour of our homes—yours and mine? Although we’ve never crossed one another’s thresholds, we’ve been there, at least if you live in America. Take the tour with me. You enter through the front door. On one side is the living room, on the other sits the dining room. If [...] Read More...

          If you recognize the stapler, you know the movie. “Office Space”—Possibly the best movie ever made. Ever worked for a boss like Lumbergh? Here’s a smart bit of dialog for your Friday. Peter Gibbons: I work in a small cubicle. I uh, I don’t like my job, and, uh...

My take on this is probably far-afield from the mainstream. I think the Dark-Side, firms like Google, Microsoft, and Oracle look at the confusion and lack of planning in terms of what the final EHR/PHR platform will look like and they simply drool. With hundreds of EHR vendors and RHIOs and RECs and...

Every wonder how it is that all the billions in healthcare IT money came about? I imagine it went something like this. DC 1: Email those fellows over at HHS and tell them we should just make the doctors install Electronic Health Records (EHR). DC 2: While we’re at it, how about we pay them a bonus [...

          I was recently in a large call center of one of my clients. Supervisors and CSRs were scurrying about clearing their desks of binders and cheat sheets in an effort to make the center look paperless. I looked up just in time to see an ominous looking flock of people...

Below are a few thoughts I submitted to the WSJ Healthblog at http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/11/12/a-doc-warns-of-magical-thinking-on-health-it/?mod=rss_WSJBlog   Interesting to note that they refer to the IT as it. That’s because healthcare IT is being approached as a solution looking for...