• November 2008 FEATURE ARTICLES •
From the Editor
What Truly Matters
by Michael McBride
Well, it’s November. As we wind down the year
it’s important to remember that healthcare is bigger than
politics. Yes, we elect officials to represent our interests and
we empower them to chart our course; however, healthcare
survived past administrations and it will survive the next
regardless of who sits in the White House, so it’s a good time
to ask, "Are we making progress and is it good?"
Electronic medical records, electronic health
records, personal health records, telehealth,
e-prescribing,
computerized physician order entry, regional health information
organizations, national health information network, radiology
information systems, picture archiving and communications
systems, evidence-based medicine, decision support, health
information exchange, interoperability, Certification Commission
for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT), Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) — these are only some
of the technologies, organizations and legislation active in
healthcare today.
Is all of that progress? I think so. Perhaps
so do the millions of Americans whose lives were improved by a
caregiver wielding one of these technologies. I’m one — maybe
you are too. Change is inevitable and it’s accelerating.
Consider how far healthcare has come in this decade alone; now
jump back a decade and another. The early 1980s had no Internet;
no hand-held affordable wireless solutions; no electronic data
interchange and the Windows O/S and Apple Macs were in their
infancy. Later that decade cell phones arrived (remember the
shoulder bags for the batteries?) and, at the start of the
1990s, the World Wide Web was born. Who back then could have
predicted the plethora of industries and technologies that would
sprout from that seedbed? Now jump back to today. Kind of blows
your mind, doesn’t it?
Mankind is so embroiled in our social and
political turmoil that we forget what we’ve accomplished. Let us
remember that healthcare is something all humans need at some
time in their lives. It took humans to invent it, and it takes
humans to administer it and provide it. All over the world
outside of race, religion and political leanings, humans
participate in these activities with one goal in mind — to
improve the health of another. If you’re one of them, who chose
a profession dedicated to the wellbeing of others, thank you.
In doing so, you improved life for us all.
