Answering the mail

I have to admit I’m shamefully behind on blogging this week. Between the AMA House of Delegates meeting, deadlines for FierceMobileHealthcare Tuesday and FierceEMR Thursday, plus a dentist’s appointment thrown in for good measure, I’ve been too busy or too tired to post here. I also submitted an entry for the BNET Healthcare blog, but it hasn’t been posted yet.

Meantime, I’ve left some people hanging.

While I was on the air with news anchor Andrea Darlas of WGN-AM 720 in Chicago to discuss President Obama’s speech to the AMA, I promised this link to a story about a high-schooler in Washington state who correctly diagnosed herself in science class with Crohn’s disease after doctors were stumped for years. Folks, this is why we need clinical decision support.

Fellow blogger Lodewijk Bos of the Im-Patient blog commented that he would like to see examples of the paranoia I observed at the AMA meeting. OK, but I have to link you to commentaries I wrote elsewhere, for FierceMobileHealthcare and FierceEMR. I humbly offer my “The audacity of ‘nope'” headline from the latter commentary for the Headline Hall of Fame.

Tonight, “Anonymous,” my biggest fan, left a comment asking where the proposed definition of meaningful use is. It’s right here, my friend. Actually, that page contains instructions on how to comment on the proposal. Scroll down for links to the preamble, a matrix of the proposed requirements and the CMS backgrounder on Medicare and Medicaid health IT provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.