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Grassley Sends Inquiry to Hospitals – If He Participated As an E-Patient, We Might See Some Better Questions Asked And He Could Have a Better Idea About How Health IT Works and the Value It Creates

1/20/2010 06:37:00 PM  ,  

Once more, that’s the problem with all these folks, they don’t participate.  Everyone in Health IT can see it and we make posts such as this one on blogs to discuss it.  If he really wanted to learn about Health IT, it would behoove him to visit the Garfield Center at Kaiser, he would learn a lot at that place.  I’m looking through the lists of questions on the Wall Street Journal and I feel sorry for hospitals having to answer some of these questions and can imagine what the IT folks are saying imagetoo as they are posed from a “non participant” stand point.  Being an E-Patient is the best way for members of Congress to gain knowledge and understand what the public is looking for in reform.

Health IT vendors and hospitals work together very closely as both want success, the only problem they have is the money to improve and update systems as needed, something the “non participants’ don’t quite understand.  Again I am speaking out a bit here, but you can find these same under tones all over the web and perhaps at a hospital near you.

“What are the vendors’ roles in helping your facility train in the use of their products?” is one of the questions that somewhat makes me think “duh”, systems do not get installed unless training comes with it, so gee come on, that is figured into the price for goodness sakes as without it, any installation will have problems.  I also like the question regarding a system to follow up on complaints, come on, this has been ongoing everywhere forever.  The first stop is called “the help desk”.  Are we so far out of this we have not encountered one of those?  The relationship question is one more to sigh at, sure they all hate each other right, NOT.  Mr. Grassley might bone up on what “partnerships” are all about today, the world lives on them, but maybe we’re a bit slow here, but you almost have to read news on internet maybe for this to sink in.  The link at the Wall Street Journal has all the questions in the letter spelled out, read it and see what I mean.

Anyway, I would love to be a fly on the wall and watch the expressions of the IT departments receiving this questionnaire.  I am just convinced from what I see in the press that Mr. Grassley doesn’t like change as he made statements today after the election in Massachusetts that we should put the brakes on healthcare reform.  When information like this hits the press and everybody who participates and is well educated in IT sees this stuff, it’s just one more waste of time and effort with rhetoric.  He’s one of many representatives we have in Congress that continues to live in the 70s and appears to have a difficult time seeing value with technology, so we are back to the old head hunting and finding blame methodologies instead of moving forward.  Again, I truly believe if he were in fact an E-Patient and participated a bit more from the technology side of a patient, he would understand some of this, but you can only drag a horse to water and can’t make them drink.  He could even read some of what is published on this blog and get educated for that matter, others do.  BD 

Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator and a prolific author of letters, has written to more than 30 hospitals to ask about their experiences — including “complications,” “errors” and “problems” — with health IT systems.

The letters follow a barrage Grassley sent out last fall to some of the companies that sell electronic systems to hospitals and doctors, asking some similar questions.

Health IT is a big deal at the moment, of course, because of the tens of billions of dollars included in last year’s stimulus bill to encourage doctors and hospitals to buy and use electronic systems

Grassley Asks Hospitals About Problems With Health IT Systems - Health Blog - WSJ

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