Dr. Koppel,
This is an open letter that I plan to publish on Linux Medical News and elsewhere. As you probably know, your JAMA ‘Hold Harmless’ article presents just the tip of the iceberg. Your article and more data from the Washington Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503667.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
make it abundantly clear that proprietary vendors are intent on establishing private property rights for something that private property rights are clearly not appropriate for. It leads to the logical absurdities, expense, and moral hazards we are experiencing now. The obvious dangers, enormous conflict of interest, as well as highly practical considerations such as simple non-performance of proprietary Electronic Medical Record software is manifest. What the proprietary industry could not achieve with vendor lock-in, legislative help like Stark exceptions, trade secrets, and inadequate products they are attempting to achieve by pure politics. Politicians, proprietary vendors and its lobby are playing ‘heads we win, tails you lose, we are king, it is good to be king’ games with our safety, our privacy, taxpayer money, and our lives. This may well succeed in ushering in a kind of digital feudalism with the most intimate details of our lives. Such landlord type games are entirely inappropriate for the practice of medicine. They are antithetical to American history and values. A generous and virtuous society should not allow this to occur. (more after the break)