Category Archives: da-bidiness

WSJ: Businesses Seek Higher Hospital Standards

The November 15th Wall Street Journal’s print edition section A-3 (maybe the online edition did too, I don’t subscribe to it) reported this week that a heavy weight line up of businesses called ‘The Leapfrog Group’ which includes GE, GM, Delta Air Lines, AT&T, IBM, Boeing and Xerox are using their more than $40 billion health care dollar muscle to force hospitals to install computerized prescription systems. The consortium would direct its employees only to hospitals that have the requisite systems installed. ‘…The group was formed earlier this year to respond to a disturbing government report last year that found that medical mistakes at hospitals result in between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths a year and produce more than $20 billion in added costs.’ Wouldn’t 1/1000th of this money funnelled into open source projects for prescriptions be the right approach?