Tim Douglass wrote:
On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:41:36 -0500, dpb wrote:
....
One wonders how many of these same players (and new ones) are making
large contributions to push the current agenda and did so during the
campaign...

Could well be, although few of those players had the kind of size and
reach to do any political activism.

Well, the particular one(s) w/ which you were associated may not; the
former outfit I worked thru is $2B annual sales and are/were _VERY_
adept at having folks on the inside who knew the current hot-button
agenda items of every key player in Congress as well as close contacts
in all the pertinent agencies. I've not kept close tabs, but I'm sure
they (and all the other of their ilk) haven't been idle. That's not
_all_ necessarily bad; it's how things happen, but one shouldn't pretend
all of this is happening merely as a goodwill gesture.

Just an odd anecdote relating to electronic medical records. I have a
friend whose husband is a GP. He was actually voted state doctor of
the year a while back. The clinic he works in recently went to an
electronic system and he hates it. A big part of the problem is that
he is now expected to enter into the computer (something he is not
skilled at) all of the patient notes he previously scribbled on a
chart or dictated to a recorder. The result is that he only sees about
2/3 as many patients a day as previously.

OTOH, my personal GP, a younger (OK, still probably in his 50s) doctor
in a different clinic went to a computerized system at about the same
time. He absolutely loves it. He claims he sees more patients in a day
and gives better service. ...

My brother is a veterinarian w/ a tie-in to a nationwide group. They
went to digital recordkeeping system as well a number of years ago. It
had the same effect as the former above--initially it required him to
spend several additional hours every evening after closing the doors to
transcribe the daily records. Eventually he managed to get
adequately-trained technicians who could do most of the transcription
but it is still an additional labor cost that he doesn't see made up for
in increased productivity or other offsetting cost avoidance.

The system has improved over the years but so have the associated
hardware and maintenance costs as the processor power requirements have
gone up drastically. As well, it has on occasion become a bottleneck
when there have been server/network failures either local or, more
often, remote that have kept the system unoperational. Unfortunately in
those cases, the business model has move to where they are essentially
shutdown if the 'puters are down--that was never the case before.

I think the point about individuals is valid; however, and certainly
virtually everyone who is growing up today has far better computer
skills than most of the present geezer generation. That combined w/
improving systems themselves probably will make the success rate go up;
however, I'm still far more interested in my physician actually knowing
some medicine than in him being an expert IT guy and relying on a remote
neural net to prod him w/ answers a la the service tech in a far away
call center...

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