What Does the Trump Presidency Imply for Healthcare and Healthcare IT?
Many organizations have asked me to comment on the impact of the Trump Presidency on Healthcare and Healthcare IT. I served the Bush administration for 4 years and the Obama administration for 6 years. I know that change in Washington happens incrementally. There is always an evolution, not a revolution, regardless of speechmaking hyperbole.What am I doing in Massachusetts? I ’m staying the course, continuing my focus on social networking for healthcare, mobile, care management analytics, cloud, and security while leaving the strategic plan/budget as is.I have no inside information and no inv...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - November 16, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Thursday Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of November 2016
Yesterday in Massachusetts everyone was fatigued from a long night of watching election results. Everyone was asking about the impact of the surprising result. What will happen to the economy, the stock market, mood, culture, and domestic tranquility?The questions we asked at Unity Farm were basic - should the election change our thinking about growing the farm and sanctuary? Will we be able to continue to fund the programs we ’ve put in place? Should we continue to focus our efforts in the United States?Our answer, after speaking with career government employees, who will be serving the next a...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - November 10, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
What is Patient and Family Engagement?
I recently participated in a nationwide (not the United States) healthcare IT planning effort and one recommendation was universal availability of patient portals. Several reviewers commented that patient portal is a loaded term - it implies that clinicians control the data and patients are given a view into it. One person said, “that’s so 10 years ago”BIDMC has been working with patient/family shared medical records, Open Notes and various consumer-facing apps since 1999. Over that time we ' ve discovered that patients typically do not want raw data, they want something actionable -...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - November 9, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - First Week of November 2016
Now that I ’m back from my Asia Pacific travels, I’m hard at work in the evenings and weekends catching up on the farm work I missed. The storms of Fall have caused a lot of fallen branches and trees. The 5 inches of rain (so much for the drought), have created a soup of mud, hay, and poop in the animal paddocks. We ’ve created the mother of all brush piles - 50 feet long and 20 feet high from all the fallen branches and debris in the forest around the barnyard. We ’ll grind it next week and use the chips on all the trails we’ll build on the new Sanctuary property when the tr...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - November 3, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
On the Road
Over the past few months, I ’ve been in England, China, Denmark, New Zealand, and Canada.Each of them is rethinking their healthcare IT strategy and is not entirely satisfied with past progress.I ’m often asked by senior government officials to help harmonize IT strategy at the country level. That I can do. I ’m also asked to discuss the US Presidential campaign, but that defies rational explanation.I frequently say that healthcare IT issues are the same all over the world. Here ’s a few common observations1. Top down never worksIn every country I ’ve visited (there are 195 in the world...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - November 2, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Fourth Week of October 2016
After two weeks of international IT collaboration, I ’m returning to the farm tomorrow. Kathy and I have been in constant contact despite the 6, 12 and 17 hour time shifts during my travel.What has Kathy done in my absence?1. A few baby guinea fowl showed up in the driveway after being hatched in the forest and then chilled in rain/freezing temperatures (did I mention Guinea Fowl are horrible parents). We immediately put them in the brooder but only 1 survived. We named him Rambo. He refused to eat because he was so focused on searching for his brothers and sisters. Kathy gave hi...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 27, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
New Zealand Can Lead Healthcare IT
I ’ve been in New Zealand this week, meeting with government, academic, and industry leaders to discuss the IT challenges ahead - social networking-based teamwork for health, mobile applications, precision medicine analytics for decision support, and cloud computing all within a framework of protect ing privacy.I believe that New Zealand has a unique opportunity to leapfrog the rest of the world with healthcare IT breakthroughs that show the rest of us what is possible from a 4.5 million person learning lab.Why?The perfect storm for innovation requires alignment of technology, psychology, and implementation.New Zealand i...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 26, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Third Week of October 2016
I ’ve been in China this week, so Kathy has been running Unity Farm. As usual, the farm continues to be an ever evolving and exciting place. Here ’s a typical email from her“Many visitors were here today. Our young intern was here helping out for an hour, then at 4:30pm someone dropped off a 5 year old pair of hens, then a person dropped by to spin honey from their hive. You never know what each day will bring ”She ’s received several more rescue animals this week and she’ll decide which animals which will live permanently at Unity Farm and which will be placed at other farms.&n...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 20, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
The Quality Payment Program Final Rule
Many people have asked me to review the Quality Payment Program final rule, released on October 14, 2016.Several summaries have already been written but your best bet is to rely on the CMS Quality Payment Program website at https://qpp.cms.govYes, the rule is still complex - over 2400 pages, of which more than 50% is the mandated response to comments made on the proposed rule. The good news is that CMS has been very responsive to feedback, creating a transition plan for adoption, reducing the number of criteria and extending the timeline which enables iterative learning before large scale implementation.Under th...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 19, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Second Week of October 2016
Despite my international travels this week and next, the farm waits for no one. 150 creatures need food and warmth. The buildings and infrastructure need tending. The vegetables and fruits need harvesting. Between Denmark and China, I returned to Boston for day to ensure everyone was healthy and happy.The temperatures dipped to 31F and I tucked the pigs into their quilts, shut the barn door, and let the panel heaters raise the temperature of their pig palace by 10 degrees F.The chickens and guinea fowl generate so much body heat that their coop was a cozy 50FThe alpaca and the Great Pyren...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 13, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Dispatch from Denmark
Today I ’m in Denmark speaking at a yearly national healthcare IT conference. Denmark is a remarkable country of 5 million people with a robust social support system. Healthcare is provided for life as part of being Danish. If you lose your job, generous unemployment benefits provide for the ongoing well being of you and your family. Income inequality is among the lowest in the world (see the world mapped by income inequality below)When people gather together in Denmark, there is a sense of common purpose and shared experiences. The Danish call this “hygge” or coziness.I spoke a...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 12, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - First Week of October 2016
What a year at Unity Farm: a plague of winter moth, a spring gypsy caterpillar infestation, deep drought, and maybe Hurricane Matthew, which is heading up the coast, might affect our foliage color and branch-falling. Life on a farm is never boring.Every October we press cider using the apples that were most successful that season. This year our mixture is 40% McIntosh, 40% Cortland, and 20% Macoun. Last weekend we hand pressed 250 pounds and created a cider with a ph of 3.3 and a specific gravity of 1.054 which will yield a finished alcohol by volume of 6-7%. Although the drought created gr...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - October 6, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - First Week of October
The drought has taken its toll on the Fall color, with leaves going from green to brown then dropping off the trees. The mornings are crisp - in the 50 ’s and the afternoons barely reach 70. The shadows are long and the hoop house loses sunlight at 3pm. The lettuces and spinaches are thriving in the early fall weather and the furry animals relish the cooler climate.Each week is filled with harvest work and the effort to move Unity Farm Sanctuary forward. We ’re finishing the inspections and well testing of the adjacent property this week and hopefully will progress to a formal purchase and ...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - September 29, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Social Media Guidelines for our Clinicians
We recently published this guideline at BIDMC based on the input from a multi-disciplinary working group. I thought it might be useful to share with the community, since many healthcare organizations are at the early stage developing social media policies.1. Why do consumers interact with an organization ’s social site?In general, there is a perception gap between the reasons consumers interact with companies on social sites and why the companies think they do. (Source: IBM Report: From Social Media to Social CRM)After discounts and purchases (not applicable to BIDMC), consumers ranked reviews and product rank...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - September 28, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
Unity Farm Journal - Fourth Week of September 2016
It ’s the first week of Fall and leaves are beginning to drop. The drought of Summer has stressed all the trees and they are going dormant early. We ’ve done our best to keep our orchards thriving, but the Apple harvest is about half the usual quantity as well as a few weeks early. Last year our Macs and Red Delicious had the desirable sugar levels (15-20%) in mid October. This week, they were already at 16%, so we harvested. We ’ll be pressing cider over the next two weekends and begin the weeks of fermentation for our 2016 vintage. We ’ve harvested the last of our pepp...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - September 22, 2016 Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs
