My day typically consists of waking up (which is always a plus) and going in to work at our medical records center.  We store, host or otherwise manage about 15 million medical records for hospitals, clinics and physicians from Oregon to Texas to Florida and New Jersey.  "Rubber meets the road" kind of management.  "What healthcare providers can do today in the e-environment" kind of management, you know?  A hospital without an EHR, much less an EMR, needing an H&P, an operative note, a discharge summary, that kind of thing.  Glamorous?  No.  Important and openly meeting the glaringly gaping holes in our slow and painful baby steps toward providing some semblance of secure, HITECH compliant HIE where it impacts patient care?  You bet.

No, EMRs are not at all where they should be.  They are more riddled with holes than the automobile holding the lifeless bodies of Bonnie and Clyde at the end of their lives.  Everyone agrees with that and pointing them out is, well, worthwhile I suppose as an academic exercise.  But we're a long way from Kansas, Toto.  And by the way, Toto, you don't mind if I don't bring up stimulus treats until we get there do you?  Or at least get pointed in the right direction?

This blog will pull the focus back to the center, to the heartland if you will, of what we see and experience in our corner of the world.  It may not be glamorous, but transferring critical HIE in a HITECH world, little bits at a time, at the right time, feels pretty darned good to us....  Read article