John Loonsk

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the substance of the Affordable Care Act, it's time to refocus attention toward the essentially bipartisan support for health IT. At the same time, it's worth reconsidering some closely-held beliefs about technology's role in care delivery.

The ACA surviving the Supreme Court means that now is the time for a Health IT orthodoxy 2.0, contends John Loonsk, MD, with a focus on improving data quality in the near-term to ultimately bolster decision support.

Just in time to consider for comments on ONC's proposed rule on meaningful use Stage 2 (comment period ends May 7), John Loonsk, MD, makes a case for data transfer standards more functional than SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) called for in MU Stage 2 - Loonsk describes SMTP as a "dead end."

As associations, advocacy groups and other interested parties gear up to submit comments on meaningful use Stage 2, John Loonsk, MD, explains how health IT professionals can offer opinions on the proposed rules, making substantive suggestions without actually weakening the regulation.

The title of this commentary is pure jargon, but does express the issue at hand. An alternative title "The Most Important Health Policy Decision Hidden as an Obscure Health IT Technical Evaluation that You May Never Have Heard of," would have also been accurate, but is grammatically unsound and too flippant for an important subject.

Will accountable care organizations follow the lead of HIEs in analyzing data across participating providers, or surpass them? In this series, we are examining ways health IT can best support the goals of accountable care organizations (ACOs) for health reform.

The Accountable Care Organization draft rule is out, and the political, clinical and technical trek to establishing these lynchpins of the Affordable Care Act and health reform is on.

By now we all may be growing tired of the “it’s the economy, stupid” construction. What's more, using it for health IT is not respectful of the many people who work in the area, because they are earnestly trying to improve health. But, in many respects, the "forest for the trees" kind of reset that the construction suggests is very appropriate now.

People love using analogies when talking about areas that are new, abstract or controversial. Not surprisingly, the nation’s health information technology infrastructure, having all three characteristics, is prime fodder for this game. If done well, analogies offer insight and specificity and if not they can be confusing and even comical.