A little bit of humor

My head is spinning from all the travel, deadlines, interviews, email backlogs and massive piles of paper that I have had to deal with in the past few weeks, including the loss of my precious notes somewhere between the final session of the World of Health IT at the Geneva Palexpo and the nearby train station, perhaps at the grocery store in the station pavilion. I have a podcast from last week’s MGMA meeting in to post, but that’s on my other computer and I don’t feel like dealing right now.

In its place, here are some random bits of wit and whimsy.

For those who think the Internet is going to help people manage their own care, we get this buzzkill from Stephen Colbert: “Unfortunately, Google Surgery is still in beta.” If you really must know, he said this on Oct. 18 in the context of elephant vasectomies. The proof is right here. Yes, the truthiness hurts.

The midterm elections are next Tuesday, and I’m devastated to learn that Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman somehow left IT out of his wide-ranging healthcare plan. He always was a man of the people, and if he’s right about 6 million Texans being uninsured, the people rightfully are more concerned about coverage than EMRs.

Maybe the healthcare community also is more concerned about things other than EMRs, if the MGMA exhibit hall was any indication. Perhaps it was the venue, namely Las Vegas, but the over-the-top displays that seemed to have disappeared from the healthcare expo circuit the last couple of years were back. Case in point, this tiki bar at the Workflow EHR booth. Yes, that’s a surfboard on the outside wall and yes, those are real flames coming from the tiki torches inside. I don’t know how much the display cost, but I do know Workflow does not currently have CCHIT certification.