Tales of Hoffman

HIPAA in Practice

Alwin, who by the way is on an incredible tear of hysterical, fascinating, compelling entries lately, posts on the very real, very concrete effect of some of the more onerous parts of the HIPAA privacy regulations.

Productivity Abounds, but Not Here

Late last week, John Robb pointed out a great article in the Wall Street Journal about the incredible growth rate in productivity that our economy is showing. Particularly amazing is that a lot of that growth has come from the service sector, a traditionally difficult place to effect true productivity improvements. Robb hits it right on the head however, with this comment:

The two hold outs in the service world are education and healthcare.  That means that while productivity improvements will allow wage increases and qualitative improvements in other service industries without inflation, both healthcare and education will continue to see massive inflation.

Notwithstanding all the good news in the Modern Physician report I referenced earlier, we can still see that there is much, much more work to be done in healthcare. If we assume that a lot of this growth is coming from better implementation of IT in service industries, we can also assume that we are quite a ways away from seeing the same thing happen in healthcare. What will it take? Let me figure that out and I'll get back to you....with an IPO!

Modern Physician on Technology

Finally catching up on some stuff I meant to post this weekend...

Via Matthew Holt's excellent The Healthcare Blog, Modern Physician and PWC have co-created a nice supplement on physician use of IT and the Web. It's particularly interesting to see how quickly the overall market for online CME is. Medscape, of course, is one of the primary beneficiaries of this trend.

Elsewhere in the supplement there's a really interesting chart:

I took note -- because, of course, it's all about me -- that the item with the biggest gains in this chart is "access to clinical journal information." Bottom line here is that the myth of "docs don't use technology and they don't use the internet" is dead. D-E-A-D. Not only is physician use of the Internet and IT here to stay, it's really just at the beginning of it's growth curve. And as America's favorite jail cell decorator, Martha Stewart, is fond of saying..."That's a good thing."

Medical Smackdown!

Via Medpundit, the medical battle royale...Given the same equipment and similar battlefield conditions, who would you want treating you: Hawkeye Pierce or Bones McCoy? It's like taking the old Batman/Superman debate to the extreme, but I definitely got a chuckle out of it.

Ugh

These comment spammers are driving me to distraction. I don't want to turn comments off because I think they're a really important part of any blog. Besides, how else will I know anyone is reading? Anyway, Let's hope the TypePad IP blocking mechanism is working...

Linking around

Geez, today must be the day Alwin set aside to visit Medscape!

Mystery Solved

No, it's not Mrs. Plum in the library with the rope. I'm talking about my post from September about "I am really happy when...". It seems that the National PTA has a contest going on where they are asking students to be creative around that phrase. It's pretty amazing to look at my referrer logs and see so many hits on that phrase. I guess when students get an assignment these days, the first thing they do is go home and enter the theme into Google and see where it leads them. Gosh, I know I sound old right here, but homework MUST be so much different these days...

By the way (on HDTV)...

WNBC, where are you in this HDTV transition? Your competitors have all figured out ways to get a digital signal on the air, how about you? It's been two years since NY digital broadcasts went dark. Where's your commitment?

HDTV in NY is Fine...

As a follow up to my post from Thursday, WABC here in NYC is really looking fine. I'm getting great reception and Monday Night Football looks fantastic! Unfortunately the kids (and the dog!) are sleeping, so I'm not able to crank up the stereo and check out the 5.1 surround sound. We'll have to save that experiment for another day.