Some of the hospitals say they have created integrated systems of doctors and hospitals, already delivering care at lower costs, that will suffer.
The administration's strategy, presented in a report to be published today, regards the government's role as one of mainly setting goals and working with the private sector to establish product and technology standards so the computer systems of doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists and insurers can efficiently communicate and share information.
In other words, the solution is not merely to use computers, but to link the systems of doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and insurers, thus making them, in the jargon, "interoperable".This may be obvious, but today it is also a very distant goal.
The plans, she added, offered a better system of doctors and hospitals, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centhan than comparably priced plans.
This is the approach used in the United Kingdom for hospitals and community services and in Scandinavia, where local authorities provide hospitals and clinics, though there may also be a parallel system of doctors working from their own offices.
In a context of current and forecasted global health workforce shortages, attention around health professional mobility is mounting as observers and policy makers recognise its role in supplying health systems with the workforce they dependent on to function, or depleting these systems of their doctors and nurses.
"It is questionable whether the announcement of a collaboration platform to promote existing and future research initiatives can actually start to overcome the failures of today's R&D system," Marco Alves of Doctors Without Borders Germany said in a statement.
He also includes his commentary as an undertone in other stories; he described the sub-plot of the differing belief systems of the Doctor and Queen Victoria in "Tooth and Claw" as a conflict between "Rational Man versus Head of the Church".
Korea maintains a dual licensing system of medical doctors: one for conventional Western medical doctors (MDs), and the other for traditional Korean medicine doctors (TKMDs), often called Oriental medical doctors (OMDs).
As a result of the shortage of staff, irrespective of category, a system of relay doctors is used, that is, doctors who are employed to cover the vacancies that arise.
PROXYMED INC., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a provider of computer software systems for doctors' offices, said it had agreed to buy PlanVista Corp., a medical-cost manager based in Tampa, Fla., for about $60.8 million in stock.
