Comments on: Intelligent Healthcare Information Integration 3/2/09

By: Gregg Alexander

Gregg Alexander — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:07:35 +0000

Jerry, you must have been reading ahead! I could not agree with you more! In Step 4 – and spinkled throughout the other steps – I will suggest a more inclusive mindset for healthcare information integration.

Bignurse – “patient-centered, community driven” is my mantra! (And, I mean WHOLE community, not the bits ‘n pieces we usually consider, as Jerry mentioned.)

By: Jerry

Jerry — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:50:00 +0000

Re: HMOs, MCOs, InsCos and I would add in IHDNs (Integrated Healthcare Delivery Networks). To define “healthcare” solely in context of what these three organizational group provides, typical of most discussions about the ‘healthcare industry’, misses a big and probably the most foundational aspect of healthcare and that is what happens before (and after) a significant health related event requiring the use of one or more of these entities. True reform should include discussions of how other community based organizations (schools, churches, social workers, charitable organizations, long term care providers, etc.) fit into the analysis.

Excluding these community organizations from the cost/benefit analysis drives us further toward use of the more costly traditional healthcare organizations whose costs (though being reigned in somewhat) will always be less than optimal option in terms of keeping the overall community’s growth healthy and sustainable

Hopefully one of the remaining four “steps” includes these key entities involvement in your suggested “overhaul” of U.S. healthcare.

By: Bignurse

Bignurse — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Great article, Dr Alexander! To expand on the concept of IHR, I would propose VHP – Virtual Care Plan. This is the IHR (integrated health info, inclusive and interoperable) that is patient-centered. All health data that is of any value would be standardized and would relate to the Care Plan of the person as they travel through the interoperable system.

By: Gregg Alexander

Gregg Alexander — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:16:30 +0000

Al…thanks, and agreed – shame.

An “IHR” is an integrated health record. It does not negate nor minimize current EHRs or PHRs, but overrides and integrates them.

EHRs/PHRs= Compartmentalized health data; fractionated health care
IHR=integrated health info; inclusive and interoperable health system

More to come in “Step 4″…stay tuned!

By: Al Borges, MD

Al Borges, MD — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:16:12 +0000

Great article! It is a shame that HMOs have devolved; when they first got steam in the early 1990′s I thought that they would be positive eventually for healthcare in the USA.

BTW- what’s an IHR?