David,
Agreed. I get a kick out of the one that says the EMR should communicate with other EMRs, if I am reading that correctly. Isn't that a little like saying, "Two people should be able to throw a baseball back and forth 25 times without dropping it." Isn't that dependent on the person who is least capable of catching and throwing a baseball?
AC may be capable of transmitting records very well, but if there isn't another EMR that is capable of receiving them what good does it do.
There are many programs out there such as Certified Mail or Drop Box that allow one to send an email or records to a central and secure server and the receiving entity gets an email letting them know it is there. The data never leaves the central server.
If the government wants this, then they should do like YouSendIt, Drop Box, Certified Mail and Adobe and have huge secure servers that allow physicians the capability to upload data and consultants to access it based on patient approval.
Years ago, Logician Internet bought by Medscape Encounter followed by its going out of business did have the capacity to interface with each other.
Why doesn't the legislation, CMS, HHS and the president get on national television and state that the government dropped the ball 15 years ago when they should have seen this coming and looked into designing an EMR that would do all these things. Instead, they offered a free EMR, which basically was the one used by VA hospitals. Oh, and btw, it was about as user friendly as Backup Exec.
If the first congress ran the government like they do now, we would still be paying Great Britain taxes on Lipton tea and Snapple.
