e-Health -- who's sneaking a peek?

Winter fails to show up in Ontario

Staring out across the park and wondering whatever happened to winter, I was gently brought back to the task at hand when a couple of recent media articles flashed across my mind -- they had me wondering who's been reading this blog!
For example one of the dailies, The Star, recently reported on a speech at the Toronto Board of Trade by the Minister of Health, Deb Matthews, where she articulated her plans for future relationships between doctors and their respective LHINs.
The paragraph that caught my eye states:

"...Matthews will place the provinces’ 200 family health teams under the control of Ontario’s 14 local health integration networks (LHINs), the regional authorities that oversee the system."

I've long been an advocate of the above (see previous article here), and even though Ms. Matthews hasn't gone all the way to make doctors employees of their respective LHINs, I feel this is a great start with respect to their availability, manageability and accountability.

I also mentioned rewarding doctors based on their performance, and sure enough, an on-line magazine article containing that same idea shows up in my inbox a few weeks later!
Although based on the US healthcare system, one could argue it's still applicable here in Ontario; the gist of the article revolves around the fact that 20%-30% of spending is wasted because of non-coordinated care; it continues by stating that one plan the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has to reduce the above:

"... is to replace the pay-for-service approach to reimbursing Medicare providers with an approach that has a significant performance element, whereby providers are rewarded for showing improvements in care.
Pay for performance requires that providers be able to prove they’ve improved patient outcomes in a range of areas."

After reading the above, I was thinking that any-time soon, some media giant such as the New York Times or The Star will be calling to discuss syndication -- after all, people must be reading my stuff -- all this blogging about EHRs, EMRs, and PHRs, may have finally begun to take root!

Well, I'm still waiting -- perhaps it was just plain coincidence, or due to the fact that "great minds think alike", or ...

What's your take?

Until next time, stay healthy and start your preparations for Spring -- it's on our doorstep!


Ernest A. James

President & CEO
Regal Informatics Inc.