Bet and Adam,
I hope nobody thought that I was making light of Adam's truely painful loss. Goodness knows I would be a useless pile of mush should some sort of similar fate became of my beautiful wife. You and yours are in my thoughts Adam, Truely they are. But that being said it was Adam that threw it out there as though it had some profound impact or reason to be considered. It is sort of one of those damned if you do or don't, just even touching it is just seen as being so wrong, so perhaps all sides would be better served to move on from this one, Peace OK?
All I can say, is nobody like Jon clings so tight to a negative concept such as this without cause or reason seeing that it is obviously making for some interesting press and ink here.
Furthermore, sure it all seems far off and kind of like a bad itch you just can't scratch, some fly you just want to swat away until it happens to you, your practice, your provider, your dear wife because you advocated heavily in a pro-consumer, squeaky wheel gets the grease kind of way, the way I was raised and taught by my dear dad, rest his soul. I was probably the only 10 year old who knew who was the NYS AG and what his role was in our government back in 1969. Just you wait and see... If and when it darkens your front door, then suddenly it is not so academic, so far off, so unimportant, so easy to blow off or sweep under a rug. Some of you my dear friends should know this best of all (and you know who you are) because it was your council, your friendship, your support, your ear, that gave me some comfort in those weird dark days.
Do you remember my attempt at optimism when it seemed that we where all attempting to reach a good positive resolution to this thorny issue based on some of the concepts that I first proposed, the protection of all parties involved intellectual property rights. The vendor, the provider and the patient. It is short sighted, self-serving policies like these that are clung to, too tightly by vendors and other stake holders that are going to lead to the wrathe of CCHIT being forced upon us all, because part of what CCHIT claims to seek to do is to standardise all the data for easy swapping between platforms and programs. If we can't take the lead here, and prove that there is a more positive way of working together here to protect all parties, then we get what we deserve and we and Al have already lost the fight... Then we are digging our own graves here folks, truely we are.
Seriously folks, think about that without just viserally reacting to it out of hand. It is this type of petty in fighting among ourselves that will seal our fate here and assist our foes in locking us into their servitude. I just don't understand how most of you can defend what to us and Roy seems so totally indefensable, the holding hostage of ones intellectual material and data, for personal gain or reasons. Why is the protections that the vendors all seek so understandable and defensable, but the protections of both the provider, folks like you and my wife, doctors all, and the interests of your patients seem so un-important and so trivial, that Paul, Nancy and Roy are but irritants to be asked to quiet down or shut up???
Awhile ago Al, posted some really good links to articles that were written about the concepts of some form of a more mutual protection of all the parties involved. So we are not the only ethically concerned people on this subject. Why a company that claims to be the most moral and ethical one in this business doesn't see this as a great opportunity to continue to differenciate themselves from their more eithically challenged competitors is simply beyond Me and Nancy. So
Can't we all be better than this? Why does the continued conversation here about all this seem to bother so many of you so much? Is this our problem? Whose problem is it really? I wonder why the protection of this feel good thing even in light of some very troubling policies that we now know have the real possiblity of becoming reality for any one of us, is so valuable to all of you to protect, even at the possible expense of the security of your own practices and therefore your own legal liabilities as well as your ethical and medical obligations to your patients. Even as a former student of human psych some behaviors still amaze me...
Bert, what happened to your feelings about folks like you, me and Roy being some of the few who stuck our necks out for the great whole? I can understand your basic response to come to the aid and defense of a friend such as Adam. That I can certainly understand and truely value and admire in you. If I haven't said it enough, Thanks, you have surely shown it to us, to me many times in the past, so I have no issue with that. Don't ever stop being that person, I try to be that same person. It reminds me of the relationship between Senser and Hawk in the old Robert Parker series of "Spenser for Hire". "He does what he says he'll do." But were is your defense and concern about this very important issue of the defense of providers' and patients' rights of intellectual property? I know it was once there and that it was real, just as your friendship is very real and in one's face. I really do admire that in you....
It is these types of divisions among ourselves that have allowed the selfish interests of folks like the insurance carriers to take control and walk all over all of us. Perhaps we'll just crawl back under the rock that Nancy and I were chased under back during the nuclear holocast. I guess we could just call OfficeMax tomorrow and order up a whole bunch of paper and folders so nobody can ever threaten us with access to our own charts again... This way we can just duck and hide, so we don't get our own heads cut off. I'm sorry (not!) that we were looking out not just for ourselves but for everyone, all citizens, all providers and all patients, the entire country in this brave new world. Be it CCHIT with back door portals and centralized servers with everyones healthrecords on it, or issues such as this, is there really any difference???
Just don't say we didn't warn ya.... As it was put so well back in an old Pogo comic strip so long ago; "we have met the enemy and he is us".
Good Night and Good Luck.....
