Well Done!

I wrote this satirical post 13 years ago: How to Waste a Boatload of ARRA Money. Thank you Matthew Holt for posting the original article on The Health Care Blog back in 2009. It was the most commented post at the time and broke the web site. But it sounds like y'all needed to migrate the site anyway, so you are very welcome!

Reflecting back on this time brings so many fond memories. I vividly remember my employer informing me that if I publicly posted anything like this again, I might be out of a job. I worried a little bit that it might be off-putting to future employers, but I have never been accused of being risk averse. Sometimes the truth hurts. It still needs to be told.

Sadly, my predictions came true to varying degrees. We have made some progress with patient engagement, but the current state of affairs is rather unimpressive. When it comes to technology, major health IT vendors have done such a good job of sabotaging data interoperability efforts that we started using the term “information blocking” due to this sad reality.

I see another window of opportunity similar to the one we had in 2009. The traditional health care system had its chance and wasted a lot of money and we have begun to move on. Fortunately, it seems that open source-based solutions are finally getting traction and that may result in more successful technology implementation efforts when it comes to public health and social service IT infrastructure.