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Had she been alive today, today would have been the 101st birthday of actress Ann Sothern. A quick glimpse at her acting credits includes appearances in dozens of movies and her own circumstance comedy that ran for three seasons throughout an acting career that spanned closely six decades. You may ask why I’ve opened an article that deals with medical billing, coding, compliance and health selective information with a short biography of an old actress. Please bear with me for a few paragraphs. There is one credit on Ann Sothern’s resume that sticks out in my mind and is applicable to today’s dissertation. In 1965, Ms. Sothern played the voice of a dead woman in a television show that most critics now point to as one of the worst shows in the history of television. That show was My Mother, The Car. The show followed the exploits of a young man who one day buys an oldfashioned automobile from a used car lot. When he turns on the radio in the car, who will have to be on the radio but his dead mother supplying life counsel from beyond the grave. Mercifully, this show only lasted one season and to my outstanding glee is not available on DVD. As we stand back and look at this plot line, we start out to wonder not only why such an atrocious idea ever made it to air, but what person, when this idea was pitched to them, thought that something like this would appeal to the watching public. Worse yet, the young man in the show was played by Jerry Van Dyke, whose entrance onto the American amusement landscape acts as the uttermost symbol of what happens when we let a gifted person’s less gifted siblings share a piece of the spotlight. I brought forward the example of My Mother, The Car to illustrate that no matter what the quality, all any idea genuinely needs is a benefactor; an individual who hears an idea and states “I think that’s great! Let’s run with it”. Which brings me to the proposed rule defining “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHR) that was freed on December 31st by CMS. In early 2009,when it was declared that physicians would receive incentive payments for the significant use of EHR in mid-2011, there was much excitement that a new day was dawning in the way our health care infrastructure managed and shared patient medical information. Before significant use was defined, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) formulated a corroboration for EHR schemes that would meet the standard. Some systems gained CCHIT certification prior to the release of the proposed rule, which I pointed to in an earlier article as premature. Since the proposed rule listing 24 specific necessaries necessitated to meet significant use was freed on the last day of 2009, numerous exercises who took the plunge and purchased an EHR prior to a clear definition of what was necessitated to meet the general are experiencing buyer’s remorse, realizing that a big investment has been made for schemes that may not meet the standards if the proposed rule is imposed as written. The requisites demonstrate high ideals of treatment and public health. An example of this is the idea of EHR’s being capable to share indispensable patient condition selective information with immunization registries and public health agencies. Under this proposed requirement, at least one test ought to be performed to evaluate the EHR’s capacity to provide electronic lab results to a public health agency. We heard a lot when it comes to interoperability when the discussion of significant use started out in earnest last year, but a requisite such as this may only work if the applicable public health agencies have the capacity to receive the info electronically. Also put forth is the proposal that any certified EHR system be capable to provide people who are in need of medical care with an electronic copy of their health data upon request. The key word in that phrase is “electronic”. While numerous more sophisticated EHR systems and more spectacular health care foundations now have this capability, this requisite places a big privacy and security burden on littler exercises that lack the IT infrastructure aid to give rise to a secure electronic pathway from the office to the patient. It is the intersection of high ideals and the execution of the same that presents itself as a formidable challenge to any idea. Between now and the release of the final rule, which is expected sometime after March of this year. I give hope or courage to those that have yet to buy an EHR system, and even those who have imposed an EHR in their exercise believing it would meet any standard, to review the proposed rule. If these necessaries outlast scrutiny and become final, this may someday be seen as an idea that tardily took on a life of it is own, consuming everything in it is path until it was too late. This would be similar to the thought all those years ago that a dead mother talking to her son through a car radio would be likeable to a wide audience.
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Wonderful Glimpse at the Legendary Ann Sothern by A Devoted Friend and Fan