By Lynn McVey, COO, Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center
Mother Jones magazine recently published a critical piece about EHR vendor Epic. It reported:
1) "There is no interoperability." What does this mean? It means the information remains in silos.
2) "Epic focuses on Epic-to-Epic data exchanges." What does this mean? No interoperability and more silos.
3) "Is the government fed up with Epic?" What does this mean? I'll bet they wish they would have selected only one EHR vendor for all 5,000 hospitals.
Sure, I understand free market and capitalism, but healthcare doesn't have the time it takes for mergers and acquisitions to end up with only a few solutions. It's ironic that we currently have hundreds of technology solutions in an industry that doesn't have technology skills.
My email's auto-signature is a quote from my healthcare hero, Dr. Atul Gawande. Dr. Gawande says "We have one opportunity to leverage technology to improve care. That opportunity is data." Fortunately, the hundreds of technology solutions that foster non-productive "silos" are not our savior. So now what? >> Read the full Hospital Impact post