Wednesday’s meeting of the Mass Health Information Technology Council was brief and to the point — the Council has to quickly integrate the e-health requirements in Chapter 305, the cost containment bill Massachusetts passed last year, with the e-health provisions in the federal stimulus bill — ARRA, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — to make sure that Massachusetts gets the biggest bang for its e-health buck.
Over the next two months, the Council will hold a series of stakeholder meetings to elicit comments and feedback from various groups about electronic health records. HCFA will attend these meetings and may convene an e-Health Records 101 educational opportunity to raise awareness about the potential for patient empowerment as well as the challenges involved in connecting health records electronically.
If done well, an interconnected system of electronic health records can go far in eliminating the silos in our current fragmented system. Can you imagine having access to your complete health record? Or being able to communicate with your healthcare provider by secure e-mail, or setting up or changing your doctors’ appointments on line? Or knowing that you won’t be prescribed conflicting prescriptions because your provider has access to your prescription history? The possibilities for quality and safety improvement and cost savings are huge, but the potential risks and challenges are also enormous, from concerns around privacy to less face time with your provider, there are many issues that have to be worked through.
Health Care For All urges interested consumers to attend the Mass HIT Council meetings, and we will let you know when we schedule e-health meetings here. We need consumers asking questions, offering ideas, and learning about the possibilities available through this initiative. There is ample funding available to make the e-health initiative truly transformational. I will be working hard to make sure that consumer voices are at the decision-making tables, and I challenge anyone who is interested in learning more to let me know.
Secretary Bigby and the Information Technology Council are committed to a transparent and inclusive process, so please hop aboard; the e-train is leaving the station!
Lisa Fenichel
fed up,
Baucus’s white paper might be good for only one thing, but ain’t it a shame that it’s not two-ply?
We all know how “secure” the Internet is. I certainly don’t want my info online for all who have access to see, and for the state or Federal gov’t to make a unilateral decision about this is a violation of my right to privacy. The Connector was given “clearance rights” to the MassHealth mainframe. This, too, was a violation of people’s rights. No one asked our permission.
Actually, considering all the chit chat about “rationing” care or less treatment for the elderly which has been gift-wrapped by the pols and insurance conglomerates as “cutting health care costs,” the IT system is probably more about making it easy to decide who gets care and who does not.
Outgoing Partners’ CEO spoke to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce last week. I saw an excerpt on the Channel 5 news. He talked about the above more or less and added something about: counseling will be available for family members so they can come to terms with this. This concept is also discussed in Daschle’s book (per a friend). Framing is everything in this game, but a lot of us don’t take stupid pills. Also, we know doctors who are ready to leave the state or find another use for their skills b/c of the tiering and capitation.
Had I been at that GBCB meeting I would have asked three questions:
1) Mr. M, what is the cut-off age?
2) Does this mean the older we get, the cheaper the premium b/c we’ll get less care?
3) Who appointed you G-d?
The convoluted, bureaucratic layers the MA plan and proposed nat’l so-called health care reform are laughable if the topic weren’t so serious.
Obama said after the White House Health Care Summit which, btw, was a lot of people laughing too loud at each other’s jokes with nothing much said. Wait, I take part of that back – Senators Whitehouse and Schakowsky were the only two I heard who made excellent sense, and I called to thank them. I didn’t watch the entire “show” so perhaps there were a few others who also had intelligent words. If so, many thanks to them as well.
The only plan that will deliver EQUITABLE, quality, affordable CARE in a fiscally responsible manner is HR676 – the expansion of Medicare to include everyone. It’s there, it works and it gets rid of the big problem in America: the gluttonous private health insurance companies (that support HCFA-MA et al). Otherwise, we will continue with the status quo rearranged to look like something else.
Oh, yes, back to what Obama said (paraphrased) There will be 80 percent who do well with the nat’l plan, and for the other 20 percent, we’ll just have to work at it. Might that 20 percent be the same class of taxpayers who are being gravely harmed by the MA plan? Probably. And where have we heard a similar excuse? Right here in MA for the past three years ad nauseum. Any results? Not yet. Any regard for the stress, financial and medical difficulties this poorly thought out decree has caused for many? Nope. Just collateral damage. It happens. Are we angry? Oh, yeah. And the 20 percent Obama talked about will be, too, once they understand what has been dumped on them – especially those who are forced into a subsidized plan with all the caveats thereof.
Baucus, Kennedy, Rockefeller and all others who receive money from the medical industrial complex – directly or indirectly – should resign from working on nat’l health care reform or be forced out while someone explains the term: Conflict of Interest to each of them. But alas, that’s how it works is this country – money talks. The dots from the Bay State to D.C. are so easy to connect.
The scam that has been pulled off on MA residents to the detriment of hundreds of thousands is criminal, and the rest of the country is about to be sold down the river by the pols to the insurance companies who will own their lives.
As Baucus said: We’ll have a uniquely American plan.
I say: Yes, we will. The more insured, the more profit, and no one does it better than the pols in America taking payola while the insurance companies make money off of sick people.