The New New Deal

[Javelin66]

I am surprised that I'm the first to post this, I figured that Shooter listened to Mr Obama's fireside chats live every Saturday...

Anyway, our future president has announced his intentions for a very ambitious program of infrastructure projects.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16258.html

[SlightlyCatholic]

—ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS: “In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the Internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the Internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help modernize our health care system – and that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.”

This is all well and good until some hacker comes in and has fun with all those electronic medical records. They'll need a massive IT department to make sure nobody has fun with those records. The good thing about paper is that you know how many copies of something there are and you know where each of those copies are located. Electronic anything means easy access with a mouse, a keyboard, and a computer guru with too much time on his hands.

[PaulR]

Hold on tight!! It is going to be a real ride over the next four years!

[03_SHOOTER]

Originally Posted by Javelin66

I am surprised that I'm the first to post this, I figured that Shooter listened to Mr Obama's fireside chats live every Saturday...

Anyway, our future president has announced his intentions for a very ambitious program of infrastructure projects.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16258.html

And for what possible reason should I believe anything he's saying now, when he LIED his way through the primaries, and eventually to the election. Until such time as he is actually inaugurated, and attempts to enact his policies, as far as I'm concerned, he's nothing but a typical Liberal, and you can tell he's lying because his lips are moving.

[Woody]

Originally Posted by Seminarian_Tim

This is all well and good until some hacker comes in and has fun with all those electronic medical records. They'll need a massive IT department to make sure nobody has fun with those records. The good thing about paper is that you know how many copies of something there are and you know where each of those copies are located. Electronic anything means easy access with a mouse, a keyboard, and a computer guru with too much time on his hands.

Paper gets lost stained misfiled or the notes are written by some doctor who
writes like a spider on acid .A proper electronic medical record system would save money and lives .

[SlightlyCatholic]

I don't disagree with your assessment, I just think that in implementing the new system they should be careful to make sure everything is secure.

[Wolfy]

Speaking from recent professional experience, what "modernization" in this sense means is converting to a web-based system... which is neither cost effective, nor does it save any more time or energy than using paper does. We have enough trouble in my shop keeping up with electronic, web-based records of pieces of flight gear, much less entire medical histories of actual people.

Can you imagine what happens if the system crashes when someone is wheeled into the ER? What if no one knows this person is allergic to penicillin because, "Oh no, our massively far-reaching computer system is down!"

Then people will say that the solution of that is to keep paper backups of everything that is electronic. That obviously doubles the amount of work one has to do, negating any advantage the web-based system supposedly gives in the first place.

Two cents ain't worth much these days.

[HairyEyeball]

Never mind the obvious. What happens with this wonder system when you're denied life insurance or have to pay five times the premium for medical insurance when the insurance company's access to those computerized records turns up the fact that your great-grandparents died of cancer in their 30s? Or that your uncle died of alcoholism? Or...

And are we forgetting the first law of computers: Garbage in, garbage out - and no system is going to correct erroneous input (who else has been threatened with legal action for not paying a bill of $0.00?)?

[Skylark]

Originally Posted by Javelin66

Anyway, our future president has announced his intentions for a very ambitious program of infrastructure projects.

Good. Our roads and bridges are crumbling. Public works projects like that put money into the economy through putting people to work and cost the public money for a limited period of time while the benefits last much longer. While we're at it, let's work on getting a decent rail system in place.

[CAPSmith]

Originally Posted by HairyEyeball

Never mind the obvious. What happens with this wonder system when you're denied life insurance or have to pay five times the premium for medical insurance

Silly HE, why would that happen when the government is going to provide all those things for us?