Those of us who worry about the government creeping into all our lives can now stop fussing and fighting, cry it all out, and move on to implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
But first, we need two core competencies: the ability to integrate health information across providers AND (soon thereafter) the ability to separate signal from noise.
Both of these competencies will require a propagation of the cloud. Let me explain why.
Our work in the health care (EHR) marketplace remains the same as if the ACA had been reversed…and it’s the same work we SHOULD have done years ago. That is, to treat the information that gets generated during the provision of care as if the consumer was actually paying for it. Because, in fact, they ARE paying for it and always have been—but the disintermediation by both third-party payers and the government has allowed us, as providers of health care services, to get pretty sloppy with the information that gets created in the name of client care.
While they are becoming more empowered, consumers haven’t throttled us during those instances when they must submit to a second test because the first result got fumbled somewhere in the care chain. Now, as each state goes for the federal dollars provided to them in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), they’ll feel greater pressure to…well…not lose information, and be able to provide it to any appropriate care giver who needs it. All while still trying to balance their budgets.