McGuinty Liberals under attack on eHealth Records, but are the attacks misplaced?

Wow, for once I get to combine both my political and my work life in a post...

The Ontario Liberals were again under attack on eHealth front, this time in the context of significant wasted dollars "reinventing the wheel" regarding Electronic Health Records.

Both Opposition Health Critic Christine Elliott and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath discussed the fact that the Children's Health Network already has an electronic health record framework in place, while eHealth is spending millions to invent their own method of doing the same thing.

All I can say is this... from the eHealth Record meetings I attended some months ago, I can report that up until recently, the eCHIN system currently in place WAS to be the model upon which the rest of the eHealth Record system was to be based. But a decision was made somewhere along the line and that changed, and I'm not sure why. (it was right about the time I wasn't able to make it to the meetings, ironicly)

I for one would like to know why the change was made. I can't make any claims either way, whether the decision was either good or bad, but I and a few others I've talked to would certainly like to know what the basis for the change was.

This issue does, however, speak to one of the underlying problems in Healthcare over all... major projects that are undertaken, only to be thown under a bus when the Government's priorities change. I've see it happen in various places and at various times, under BOTH the Liberal and the PC's. More of it seems to be driven by the sub-cabinet and regional levels, and it causes no end of frustration to those who have to implement these systems.

Again, I can't comment either way on if this decision was either good or bad, but it does raise a whole host of other issues regarding the systemic problems within Healthcare overall in our Province. It's time to streamline things, start prioritizing, and then putting our dollars where they make the most sense. Better co-ordination and fewer levels of buracracy would be a good place to start.

There's an irony to that, however... I think that's exactly what Mike Harris was TRYING to do in the 90's. But instead of making cuts in the middle levels of management where all the waste was, the cuts got passed down all the way to the front line staff. So who was REALLY to blame for the "Crisis in Healthcare" during the 90's, hummm?

Having said all that, it's the McGuinty Liberals who are in charge right now. Therfore, it's their mess to deal with. Here's hoping that they give us a straight answer on what went wrong, and why we're still wasting so much money on eHealth, with no results after all these years.