We've been swindled

...Rather this is about a utter failure of our government to insist on interoperability between electronic health records, a failure made all the more outrageous in that the government has helped pay for those EHR systems in one of the biggest subsidy programs in modern healthcare history...

...Indeed, this is a pattern nationwide, even though over 29 billion dollars of federal investment for EHRs were appropriated in 2009.  Whether you show up at an emergency room around the corner from your hospital or a thousand miles from your hospital, there is more likelihood than not that the receiving institution will not be able to gain access to your health record.  The term "meaningful use," the standard according to which the US government funds these systems, is laughably inadequate when it comes to interoperability.  We need to understand that a large number of healthcare systems, aided and abetted by some EHR providers, view it in their strategic interest to make it difficult for patients to move from one healthcare network (ACO) to another... 

...And the fraud is likely to be compounded.  The next step in the process is a forthcoming Department of Defense procurement of an EHR system to serve the military and its dependents, whether being treated at military healthcare facilities or other facilities in the communities in and around our bases and other military installations. As I understand, there is no language in this multi-billion dollar procurement that would require the vendor chosen to achieve interoperability with those EHRs in community facilities where the government will send its patients--or where they might end up for emergent care...