Wal-Mart to Sell Physician Medical Records Systems

An article from a recent New York Times entitled “Wal-Mart Plans to Market Digital Health Records System” announces that Wal-Mart has teamed up with Dell and eClinicalWorks to offer healthcare information systems to small physician practices.

Dell will provide the hardware for these small office practice systems. eClinicalWorks will provided the systems through a web-based interface. Like most Wal-Mart products, the system will come with a modest price tag, $25,000 for one physician, about $10,000 for each additional doc.

WILL THE DOCS PONY UP?

According to the Times Article:

Only about 17 percent of the nation’s physicians are using computerized patient records, according to a government-sponsored survey published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine. The use of electronic health records is widespread in large physician groups, but three-fourths of the nation’s doctors work in small practices of 10 physicians or fewer.

Wal-Mart’s distribution model may provide cost advantages that traditional software-resellers do not have. Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Club are good at marketing products to small businesses.

Wal-Mart, however, has the potential to bring not only lower costs but also an efficient distribution channel to cater to small physician groups. Traditional health technology suppliers, experts say, have tended to shun the small physician offices because it has been costly to sell to them. Taken together, they make up a large market, but they are scattered.

“If Wal-Mart is successful, this could be a game-changer,” observed Dr. David J. Brailer, former national coordinator for health information technology in the Bush administration.

GAMECHANGER? OR SAME OLD STORY?

Many physicians, especially older physicians, are simply resistant to change. It takes time and human resources to install and learn these systems. And it takes time away from productive activity. And in small offices, the human resources necessary to install these systems simply do not exist.

Maybe we are asking the wrong question. Why, when costs for everything are up and almost all industries are consolidating, do small physician practices proliferate? Are we overpaying for medical care allowing small and inefficient practices to flourish and practice?

Damn straight we are. Take the money and the margins out of medicine and it will revert to what it should be, a service industry with wages consistent with other professionals.

STAY HEALTHY AND HEAL FAST IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!

Till Death, or the End of the Recession, Do Us Part.

Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal has an article entitled “Split Decision: Economic Hard Times Making it Hard on Couples Trying to Divorce”. One thrust of the article is that warring couples cannot financially afford to divorce. They must remain in the same home or relationship ecause they cannot afford to move out.

Another point of the article is couples are renegotiating support agreements and post-divorce financial arrangements because spouses cannot meet their financial obligations because of job loss or income reduction.

The article also notes that more couples are pursuing their divorces pro se, or without an attorney.

BABY WE ARE DOOMED TO SHARE THE LAND

It was only a couple of years ago that the always prescient Author posted an article about how the real estate boom of mid-decade was permitting couples to divorce and each walk out with some equity. In “MAYBE I’LL BE THERE TO SHARE THE LAND” (Until the Value goes up Enough and then it’s Splitsville) the Author quoted a New York Times Article “Buy Low, Divorce High”:

A little-noted side effect of the property boom of the past decade has been the real-estate-enabled divorce. Home values might have slid in some markets, but in the New York City region, where prices remain high, divorce professionals like therapists and lawyers, along with real estate brokers, say unhappily married couples are cashing in appreciated homes to underwrite a split.

“The equity that there is in real estate is one of the impetuses why there are so many divorces,” said Nancy Chemtob, a Manhattan divorce lawyer, adding that the net worth of her clients has doubled in the past three years mainly thanks to real estate. The price of the average Manhattan apartment was $1.3 million as of June, up 7 percent from a year ago, according to the real estate brokers Brown Harris Stevens.

The Author then opined:

Marriages are many things, but in the Author’s opinion, they nearly all function as economic “partnerships”. Love might bring people together, but money, or the lack thereof, keep couples together or rends them apart.

Couples combine their incomes, or perhaps other skills, and their assets, into economic relationships to buy homes, rear children, operate businesses, or for other reasons. And often the “strength” or “durability” of a marriage depends on the economic state of the marriage.

When one marriage participant is financially dependent upon the other, the financially dependant participant has little choice but to remain in the relationship despite potentially negative endogenous and exogenous non-economic factors. (The Author loves using these big economic terms).

Contrast the foregoing relationship with one in which each marriage participant is financially independent or capable of being economically self-sustaining. These relationships are economically less “durable”. And rapid improvements in a marriage participant’s wealth or income can provide a quick exit from the relationship.

BUT NOW “IT’S OH LORD, STUCK IN LODI AGAIN.”

The Author makes no value judgments on this relationship between economic conditions and familial adhesion, except to note two things. First, if it ain’t the money, then what the heck else is it?

And the little children take the hindmost.

NO OFFENSE MEANT TO LODI, OR ANY OTHER LOCATION, IN THE DESERT OF THE REAL!