EHRmageddon
In the “Terminator” movies, the cyborg network SkyNet moves to destroy all humanity as threat to its permanent domination. Likewise, the network of government, lackeys, and opportunists has created a MedNet that is well along toward wiping out all physician independence.
I hope you’re sitting, preferably with a double in hand. In the latest issue of Medical Economics, this headline in the “Tech Talk” column:
“Cyber Insurance Now a Must for Medical Practices.” The author quotes a study claiming that more than 1.5 million citizens have been affected by medical identity theft, to the tune of $30.9 billion. Frankly, I’m more than a little skeptical, but I was too busy dodging laser blasts and tactical nukes to slow down to research exactly how THAT figure was ginned up. The author – an executive for a risk management & insurance firm – is recommending that individual physicians buy policies to cover investigation expenses, credit monitoring, legal liability, PR, “cyber extortion“, and other coverage for the “defense of fines and penalties associated with HIPAA.”
– All practices should consider buying a policy to address their “risk profile.” The author closes with a warning from the future: “The fines for protected health information violations are high enough to potentially put a small medical practice out of business. That fact alone should make it worthwhile for you to investigate purchasing a cyber insurance policy for you practice.“
So cash-strapped primary care doctors can now scrounge through the ruins for additional money to cover something most don’t want, and all are being forced to buy, to transmit data to allow others to further enslave them.
If the insurance company guy says you need more insurance, than who are you to question him? Why, he’s just a very nice man who went out of his way to write this lovely article explaining to you just how vulnerable your practice is, without a thought for his own well-being. Now help the nice insurance man make a living and buy a policy, until they can think of the next thing that you need to buy insurance for.
The local doctor cartel, hospital-owned Integrated Health Associates, likes their EHR so much that they were able to lay off medical assistants by the score, due to the fact that the new software requires the doctor to do all the refills, answering questions on every rare yet possible interaction and showing reason why it should be prescribed anyway, just in case there’s a bad outcome and someone needs to be sacrificed on the legal altar. I was staying until 11 to 12 PM with my software, which is practice fusion, a free, advertisement-laden EHR which was better than the one the AMA sold me for $860 per month, that almost ruined my practice by having most accounts receiving aged over six months, without any way to induce getting paid. Hey, the AMA must have my interests at heart, right? The EHR was vaporware, and problems were just left hanging. We were to send them a “To Do” message about out problem, and what we were to do in the meantime when things didn’t work nobody could say. The industry had sold the politicians with some mighty lobbying, and reality didn’t sink far into the equation. Yeah, everyone’s labs and imaging departments will talk to your EHR, and it turns out you have to be an awfully big player for that to be worth their while, so the small practices must go, and everyone must get BIG, and have guys in suits to negotiate getting paid for work done. It must be like the Wal-Mart of Medicine. A business! Large and cheap and patients run through at jogging pace to try and make the money you used to make. Pay the small fries? Don’ t need to, really. It’s accepted that they have to go away. Please the customers? Why, we can give them all antibiotics for their viruses, and drive the resistant germs into reaping all the benefits! It’s so simple!