Monday, December 11, 2006

All in a day's work

I recently visited two of the practices that we’ve outfitted with electronic health records.

The first was a surgery practice whose head physician “greeted” me with a limp handshake and an icy stare and said: “So, you’re the CEO of the MA eHealth Collaborative? Well, that’s not anything to be very proud of, is it?” And before I could say a word, he turned and walked away. His office manager was mortified.

MAeHC has invested about $120,000 in this practice.

At the next practice, I walked in and standing there behind the front desk was a physician in a white coat, talking with the receptionist. “Are you Micky?” he asked. Still smarting from my first visit, I nodded, but hesitantly. He whipped around the front desk, arms stretched as wide as his grin, and hugged me. Yes, hugged me. “Thank you,” he said.

We’ve invested about $30,000 in this practice. Go figure………

4 comments:

dave said...

Come on. You know that no good deed goes unpunished.

Written by Micky Tripathi said...

OK, you're right. The balance of the universe plays out even at ground-level!

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

It's great that all our efforts are doing wonders to break down established stereotypes based on physician specialty.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm. Seems to me I've met that surgeon-he's the one flipping through his loose-leaf notebook trying to locate the conversation he had with our family PCP when I handed him a copy of my daughter's personal health record maintained by the PCP office.
Keep up the good work-it's slow, painful and expensive, but widespread implementation of EHRs and other data sharing will improve communication and more importantly medical outcomes.