Advocates of government-run health care are always telling us that it will be possible to dramatically expand access without an equally dramatic spending increase because the widespread adoption of health IT will produce stupendous savings.
The claim that HIT will save huge amounts of money has long since been shot down, and the idea that it will improve quality has also been shown to be pure BS. Meanwhile, as this episode demonstrates, concerns about privacy are also well founded:
An alarming privacy breach by one of Queensland’s biggest pathology labs has released patient medical histories on the internet.
And what sort of information was posted on the web?
Names, contact numbers and private details of at least 100 patients, and potentially hundreds more, were plastered on the website of Brisbane-based Sullivan Nicolaides.
But surely this is an isolated incident, right? Well … er … no. Watch this CNN clip:
Now, before I’m acccused of being a knuckle-dragging Luddite, I want to point out that I’m an advocate of health care IT. HIT can be a very good thing if implemented and used judiciously. But our president and his minions need to stop promoting the idea that they have magical powers.
If national policy on HIT is done wrong, it will be a real disaster.
Post a Comment