February 2011 - EHR: How difficult without the correct strategy

So, what’s up with CHIME? The attendees are all tucked away in an underground bunker in the convention center, the entrance of which is guarded by members of AARP. Rows of cellophane sandwiches are lined up behind the concertina wire. The group remind me of Yale’s Skull and Bones society...

I am pleased to share a guest blog by Sue Kozlowski, the Manager of Performance Improvement at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. She’s a featured blogger at iSixSigma.com, writing on lean process improvement and change management. Sue and I were speaking about some of the issues surrounding...

Several have inquired as to why I came down so hard in yesterday’s post regarding the CMS-ONC’s approach to link our physicians and hospitals through the development of HIEs and the N-HIN. I think, as do others, the goal is worthwhile but, is the current strategy going to work? I think the current plan...

Herd of cats? Of course I’ve heard of cats. I spent a summer in Weaverville, North Carolina, just outside of Asheville. (I couldn’t find it on the map either.) That summer, I was the head wrangler at Windy Gap, a summer camp for high school kids. I’m not sure I’d ever seen a horse, much [...] Read...

Do you ever wonder why people buy drills? Because they need a drill? No. They buy drills because they don’t sell holes. Why buy an EHR system? Because you need an EHR? I hope you have a better reason than that. If you’re interested, I sell holes. Read More...

Now that at least parts of healthcare reform are back on the table, or perhaps under the bus, as I await my appointment as EHR Czar, I got to thinking about what other aspects of healthcare might be reformed. It occurred to me that our system can fix almost anything we throw at it. We [...] Read More...

EHR potentially will offer a number of benefits. It won’t offer much at all if you don’t install it correctly. However, EHR is not a panacea. Without having a detaile understading of the business problems you are trying to solve, it may not be of much more value than a Xerox machine. Can you make [....