I have emails from other Kaiser patients with this devastating disease that support my contention and I am looking for more patients with similar stories. Any Kaiser patient with neuroendocrine carcinoma or carcinoid or friend or family member reading this comment please contact me at robstieg@Comcast.net so I can gather further evidence of Kaisers poor care.

It is well-known within Kaiser that I have SERIOUS (and I do mean serious) issues with Health Connect.

The methodological problems (and “attitude”) at Kaiser is one reason why I quit my job there (in addition to the primary reason–allowing our beautiful daughter to die and then hiding or misrepresenting critical medical records for Beth and our baby) and it is also why I went public with my concerns back in February in the Los Angeles Times. I have been told, as a result of my little speech in the newspaper, that at Kaiser “my name is mud”.

Of course, I haven’t read Halvorson’s book (although I did read some excerpts from it which, at a high level, I am in agreement with) but it seems to me (at least in what I have seen so far in the excerpts) as if what he is saying is very generic and there are no concrete plans that I see as to the actual implementation of his vision–a theme perhaps I have seen somewhere before, methinks.

I realize that I have only seen a small portion of his book but, in the part that I read, I saw nothing of any substance as to the hows and whys of “practically” implementing this plan.

He speaks about the need for “data” which of course I agree with. This is absolutely critical and a correct assumption.

But what he fails to mention is the need also for business rules for organizing and cataloging that data, as well as concrete procedural imperatives defined both within the context of the business itself and the full analytics for specific constraints of the application (as well as any feeder/legacy systems that may be tied to the application) in order for the associative properties of the data to be fully realized, within the context of defined clinical necessities.

Data means nothing without a fully and properly defined contextual framework.

As to the fiction that Health Connect is a “successful” implementation, as the wonderful words of praise for him and his book suggest, I beg to differ–unless he did two successful implementations somewhere else BEFORE KPHC.

In fact, I would be happy to debate Halvorson or anyone else from KPHC–anywhere, anytime– about the REAL untold story of Health Connect.

I have seen it myself, up close, too close, and of course I have my own opinions as to what is likely to happen–which I imagine is much different than the corporate spin.

Also, one side note. Halvorson mentions market incentives as a successful driver of reform. I could not agree more.

However, the current MICRA caps serve to encourage mediocrity and lack of quality care as there are no financial incentives for providing “good’ service as opposed to mediocre service since there are no effective deterrents (penalties are also “incentives” driving quality assurance standards) in place driving compliance standards in a meaningful way.

In other words, the penalties are not big enough to worry about and until they are it is unlikely that much will change–to the betterment of Kaiser’s balance sheet and the detriment of many Kaiser members seeking quality health care.

Let me just say this one more time. I challenge anyone from Kaiser (and I do mean anyone) to debate me in a public forum about methodology and controls and what normally happens with a software implementation and what actually happened within KPHC.

Anyone. Anytime.

Why is it that Kaiser seems to be above the law in ALL matters?
Reform your organization FIRST before “claiming” to be spearheading
a healthcare reform campaign. Kaiser is the opposite of good, despite
what rubbish we hear in the media. We all know the truth of what kaiser is
and we stand behind it.

Mr. Halvorson, all Kaiser Victims everywhere deserve a response.
We are eagerly awaiting your response.