Alborg wrote:

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How do you suggest ensuring INTEROPERABILITY without a standards body to set the standards?

CMS/Medicare could have simply asked for providers to follow certain medical parameters (eg- smoking cessation, HgbA1c levels, PAP smears, etc) and let it up to the physician to use whatever "tool" (paper, EMR, hybrid system) he wanted to use to deliver the results. They could have set up a simple RIO-like system by which any EMR could hook up to for "interoperability" without having to resort to an "enterprise" level CCHIT c-EHR.

I will bow out of this discussion since we obviously have two DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE views of the word INTEROPERABILITY.

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." ~ Alvin Toffler