digital dystopia

See the following -

AMA CEO Calls Digital Products Modern-Day ‘Snake Oil’

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | June 13, 2016

When it comes to electronic health record technology, the American Medical Association has been an outspoken critic about what it perceives as the shortcomings of EHRs, voicing the widespread dissatisfaction of the doctors who use the systems. However, the nation’s largest physician group is now taking aim at new and emerging health IT technologies—such as mobile healthcare apps—that it believes are leading to practice disruption...

Read More »

Halamka on Why he Disagrees with the "Snake Oil" Analogy

Earlier this week, the American Medical Association CEO called digital healthcare products modern-day "snake oil." As a provider and a technologist, I think we need a deeper dive to understand the issues, avoiding the kind of hyperbole that’s so common in politics today. Paul B. Batalden, MD, Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), once said “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets”. Let’s take a brief look at the history of national healthcare IT efforts from 2004-2016 to understand how we’ve achieved exactly the results we designed.

Read More »

Not All Snake Oil Is Digital

A different take on "snake oil" in health care was a thoughtful piece in Health Affairs, by David Newman and Amanda Frost, discussing the quality measurement morass in health care. They cite a study that estimated we spend some $15.4b annually collecting several thousand different quality measures, few of which have any meaning to consumers and all-too-few of which seem to be used to actively improve quality. It isn't that they don't think we should be measuring quality -- far from it -- but, rather: "Patients should not be able to choose substandard quality care, and substandard quality care should not be allowed to be offered in the market." Now, there's a novel concept!

Read More »

The 'Digital Dystopia': 4 Thoughts from AMA CEO Dr. James Madara

Akanksha Jayanthi | Becker's Health IT & CIO Review | June 13, 2016

Not all digital tools are created equal, and some of these tools are detrimental to patient care. This was the message James Madara, MD, executive vice president and CEO of the American Medical Association, expressed in his address at the 2016 AMA Annual Meeting. Dr. Madara compared the current digital health landscape, "something I might call our digital dystopia", to the "quackery" of snake oil remedies.Here are four thoughts from Dr. Madara's address...

Read More »