Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Monday, October 04, 2010

It Looks Like The Empire Is Planning to Strike Back. This Will Be Fun To Watch!

I have just had the following pointed out to me.

Two needed to fill Devine shoes

  • THE DIARY: Caroline Overington
  • From: The Australian
  • October 04, 2010 12:00AM

ONE of the most wonderful things about the internet is surely the opportunity it presents for all people -- smart or stupid -- to have their say.

Quite a few are having a red-hot go at it, screeching loudly into the abyss that is the world wide web, and good for them.

To be a columnist on a real newspaper, though -- that takes skill.

----- Huge amount of non e-health commentary left out. Then we come to this!

Flush the blog

IS the federal government now paying people to bag The Oz? It seems so.

Charles Wright is an ex-Age computer writer who runs one of a tiny handful of blogs actually funded by the federal government. Earlier last week, he got stuck into News Limited, saying: "If you're bewildered by the persistent undermining of Australia's e-health program by The Australian, you might gain some enlightenment from John Menadue's comments in an interview on the ABC with Deborah Cameron. As a former general manager of News Ltd, the highly experienced public service chief and businessman knows exactly how Murdoch works. I found his remarks about The Australian's campaign against the NBN and Labor's school building program illuminating." There's more, but it's jibberish, and defamatory, so we won't republish it here.

Full article is here:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/two-needed-to-fill-devine-shoes/story-e6frg996-1225933569008

This seems to have been triggered by the blogger, and his cheer squad, at E-Health Central having a go, for the umpteenth time at Karen Dearn and incidentally yours truly.

Here is the link to the blog.

http://www.ehealthcentral.com.au/2010/09/explaining-the-madness/

The best I can say on all this is to point readers to a comment posted on the E-Health Central blog pointing out that much of the commentary found there is just plain wrong from a long time NEHTA insider Dr Eric Browne:

He blogs here:

http://blog.healthbase.info/

and the comment can be found here:

http://www.ehealthcentral.com.au/2010/09/the-non-story-story/comment-page-1/#comment-623

The best bit is this:

“You claim that NASH is “the one specification” that NEHTA has struggled with. Not true! NEHTA has struggled with pathology terminology for almost 6 years. NEHTA has struggled with HL7 CDA for discharge summaries for some 4 years. They have struggled with other specifications.

Now there might be legitimate reasons for them to have struggled, but it is completely wrong of you to claim that is has been confined to NASH!”

For an organisation that has essentially sucked out from Australian e-Health pretty much all its resources to have delivered so slowly and so poorly is both a tragedy and a disaster.

Really sad.

I really think it is time all this paid blogging stopped -but that’s just a personal view. It seems to me anything that descends to the personal should just be ignored and I hope I have avoided that.

My views on NEHTA’s unaccountability are made pretty clear and every day it seems the evidence I am pretty close to the mark seems to build.

You can review the ‘spin plans’ for the HI Service etc. (which led to the creation of sponsored blogs as best I can tell) here with some background also included:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2010/02/another-chance-to-read-nehta-health.html

David.

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