When Hume Meets Alice in EHR Land

 

EHR Implementation Timeline

In The Philosopher’s Alice, author Peter Heath makes reference to the philosophical musings of David Hume when he comments that Alice’s free fall down the rabbit hole is a discovery that, “motion, by itself, gives no impression of distance covered, or therefore of velocity.” *

This is how it felt in EHR Land this week.

The previous few weeks preparing for Cerner’s visit were jam packed with To Dos and Arrangements and Gentle Reminders. This week, however, while I know we continue our free fall into the future of health care with EHR, it felt like nothing was happening. There was no way to gauge “distance covered.”

Cerner left here with a dozen laptop computers full of data about Syringa and the way it provides the best patient care possible. I know that the information is being massaged and manipulated, interpreted and interpolated. This means that we continue to progress even though it seems as if we are standing still.

And this is verified by the EHR Implementation Timeline, above (click for a larger view). All the major milestones have been met or are in progress, so we are moving right along. We can’t ask for much more than that.

* David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Bk 1, Pt 2, Sect 5.