Implementing Obamacare? “Impossible endeavor”

By Michael Barone March 18, 2013 | 3:51 pm

Will the government be able to implement Obamacare smoothly? An “impossible endeavor,” writes a reader who describes himself as “83 years young, married to a beautiful lady for 65 years, with a 54-year career in technology starting with punch cards in the Navy, retired from three major corporations at the director level, last position was with EDS working on Y2K project.” He goes on to list some of the things he believes need to be done, which I quote with his permission. I don’t know enough about this to make a judgment myself, but I have noticed over the years that the federal government has had problems procuring information technology.

RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

Technical

o   Programmers

Depending on what languages are being used will require that skill set—I bet you a lot of that code is written in COBOL and the last time I have seen that skill set was when we worked on Y2K, and we had to bring them out of retirement.

o   System Analyst

Strong ability to work with subject matter specialist to develop systems requirements and document for the programmers.

o   Technical and Subject Matter Specialists

Writers to develop Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the end users (How many will that be???) and SOP’s for operations.

Computers

o   Will we need various types of computer equipment in order to test and migrate to production? Problem is we must likely don’t have that computer capacity in order to test followed by migration to production

o   Mainframes, Desktops and other devices that I am unaware of

o   Will vendors have to get involved with hardware/software packages, etc?

o   LANs

Interfaces (based on the GAO report-as follows)

o   IRS

o   HHS

o   TREASURY

o   INSURANCE COMPANIES

o   SSA

o   STATE EXCHANGES

o   CORPORATIONS

o   SMALL BUSINESS

o   MEDICARE

Having identified the above organizations, corporations and Insurance companies will have requirements to modify their computer systems in addition to interfacing with their respective report-to organizations.

And unless I missed it, what about the Doctors having to provide information for Obamacare?

Finally, there is so much more, but I did want to give you a flavor of the magnitude of this impossible endeavor.

Human Action in the Healthcare Domain

An essay by Barry Smith, Lowell Vizenor and Werner Ceusters on the current state of the RIM, entitled 

“Human Action in the Healthcare Domain: A Critical Analysis of HL7’s Reference Information Model” 

has now been published in a Festschrift for Ingvar Johansson. The essay is available online here.