One of our students, Joe Ring, found this and it is an interesting perspective and one with which I agree.  It is inline with emerging notions of it is more communication technology than information technology that is needed.  

Interesting paper that provides a framework that tries to tease out the issues.  The challenges will be moving from a theoretical framework to collecting data to implementing the data into processes that can demonstrate improvement in quality.  I think there will still need to be an overall quality manager within the proposed framework.   It makes a good comment that "balancing carefully designed incentives that promote professionalism mibht ultimately lead to the highest quality of care. ".  I agree.  

Every time a major event occurs, in the after action report, communication problems are identified as a top issue to fix the next time.   Then, the next event occurs and it is like the movie Ground Hog Day.  It happens all again.    

 In a post-Ike meeting hosted by HealthQuilt on December 10, representatives from City of Houston, Harris County, the State, health care groups, and housing recovery groups committed to a pilot to test interoperability of information to support evacuation, medical management at community locations in the immediate post event time, and housing recovery.   The timeline is a pilot test in February 2009 for a small group of organizations with the hope that there will be a system in place that could be utilized starting this summer and tested as part of the Fourth Annual Summer Research Program.

The American Medical Association has added its support for the Medical Home concept.   http://http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/20279.html.   It joins a growing number of physician organizations advocating for new models of payment to support the tenets of the medical home concept.   A good history of the medical home can be found at http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_home.  

The AMIA Working Group lead by UT SHIS Faculty Member, Ignacio Valdes, MD, MS has approved and posted a White Paper in support of Open Source technology in healthcare.   The link to the website is www.amia.org/files/Final-OS-WG%20White%20Paper_11_19_08.pdf.   HealthQuilt has, since its' inception, adopted and supporte open source approaches to health information technology as a mechanism to decrease the barriers to interoperability.