Red Cast Really Sucks

[Jim Hyla]

i will second that.. stay around cornell enough and you can see it.. programmers think everyone "think" like they do but dont bother to actually find out.  Its also a case of the only thoughts that matter is how fast can i get this done.

And I'll give it a third. Being in the middle of switching to EMR (electronic medical records) I'm sure that the systems were never tested in the real world. Three, out of six, of us have quit trying to use the system, and have gone back to straight dictating and have the transcriptionists stick them into the proper sections. The systems look like they were developed to fill in all the blanks so you could bill the maximum code possible. They are not meant to maximize patient care.

I know there are good systems out there, the VA has one; but those were developed in house by large organization like Mayo and Cleveland Clinic. What a difference it might make if the software designers would just spend a week with a group of MDs as they see patients.

[nyc94]

The systems look like they were developed to fill in all the blanks so you could bill the maximum code possible.

Medicare Bills Rise as Records Turn Electronic

[cmoberg]

While I was the Director of System Services at Georgetown Hospital we developed a partial EMR in the early/mid 90s!  Best features, IMHO, were the bedside order entry and results reporting (the platform was cutting edge client server with Sun Workstations, SQL back ends, and legacy anciallary system interfaces). Our design assertion was that cost savings came from directly presenting the ordering physician quick and full access to med and test orders and results from past outpatient and in patient episodes or care.

[Jim Hyla]

While I was the Director of System Services at Georgetown Hospital we developed a partial EMR in the early/mid 90s!  Best features, IMHO, were the bedside order entry and results reporting (the platform was cutting edge client server with Sun Workstations, SQL back ends, and legacy anciallary system interfaces). Our design assertion was that cost savings came from directly presenting the ordering physician quick and full access to med and test orders and results from past outpatient and in patient episodes or care.

You were absolutely correct. The things that have been useful in outpatient practice are access to hospital records online, and the ability to merge some lab results. If they had forgotten about fully EMR and made it mandatory that all lab, Xray, path, etc. results were available online, and that they were uniform in reporting, so that they could easily be imported into everyones EMR, that would have improved care and reduced costs. (What a terrible sentence)

[cmoberg]

Jim, sure could have used a voice of support like yours from the outpatient side back then.  We were so far ahead of the curve on EMR that we faced heavy headwinds from many docs and even senior hospital administrators.  You would have loved the lab results reporting, it was spreadsheet like with episodes (dates of care) as columns and rows as test results. The was a great benefit to patients coming in through the ER.  It also supported practioner specific custom views.  There was also a very early PACS system that the Radiology Dept was piloting.  We brought low res proxies to the bedside from that.

A huge problem then as now is nomenclature and codification.  Hard to fuse a lifetime care record from multiple entities.  I was involved in an ARPA project around the same time that looked to bridge this divide among the participant institutions.

Alas, I became disenchanted an left healthcare IT in 1997. So interesting that I can jump right back in as the landspace remains much the same. Sigh.

[TimV]

I didn't wade entirely through that very lengthy article, but there was a heavy implication that there is a large number of doctors gaming the system.  

Truth be told, the reason for "hospitals and physicians to bill more for their services, whether or not they provide additional care" is not because they are billing for care not rendered, but rather that they were previously underbilling for services that they did render.  This occurred because the coding rules are unfathomably complex, AND the rules change every year.  As Jim points out, many of the EMRs are structured so that the docs don't leave payments they deserve for care they did provide on the table because of inexpertise with the coding rules.

In my opinion, it's not that the billing piece of EMRs are set up to increase undeserved income.  Rather, they are set up to minimize the impact of a reimbursement system that is transparently structured to provide convenient ways for payors to evade fair reimbursement for work actually done through a complex system of regulations and deadlines with penalties for the "Gotcha" type of infractions that inevitably follow.  ::cuss::::cuss::

[Jordan 04]

The last few seasons I've waited to see the comments here re: Redcast before purchasing the product.

They haven't had any of my money since spring of 2010.

CC free audio stream was very good last night. Very competent announcer compared to what we normally get from our fellow ECAC broadcasts.

[Rosey]

Video quality is WAAAAAAAY better now. This is HD. Someone must have found the good video/bad video switch. (It's inside the doll next to the good/evil switch.)

And let it not be said that I never give credit where credit's due. I may also throw in an "it's about time" or "WTF took you so long??", but this alum greatly appreciates the upgrade.

[cbuckser]

Video quality is WAAAAAAAY better now. This is HD. Someone must have found the good video/bad video switch. (It's inside the doll next to the good/evil switch.)

Crystal-clear 360p at 1400 Kbps tonight. This is RPItv-quality video.

[Rosey]

Video quality is WAAAAAAAY better now. This is HD. Someone must have found the good video/bad video switch. (It's inside the doll next to the good/evil switch.)

Crystal-clear 360p at 1400 Kbps tonight. This is RPItv-quality video.

To these eyes, it looks better than 360p, but maybe that's because it looks so much better than the 36p they had before.

[billhoward]

Quality was pretty good: video feed, power play, penalty kill. Though the feed dropped or froze a half-dozen times. I hope it's not just supercharged atmospherics announcing Hurricane Sandy.

[billhoward]

The last few seasons I've waited to see the comments here re: Redcast before purchasing the product.

They haven't had any of my money since spring of 2010.

CC free audio stream was very good last night. Very competent announcer compared to what we normally get from our fellow ECAC broadcasts.

We got our money's worth today, with hockey and with the Cornell Princeton football game (Cornell 37-35). Good quality video. Football feed was solid most all game long (unlike the Princeton and Cornell defenses). Some of the graphics are too aggressive ("What does this SFX widget do? Ooh, nice, now let's push the flame surfacing slider all the way to 10. Huh, now that the bear is on fire, let's make him rotate like a barber pole." ) Cornell right now is like a HS graphic design student design class just handed a pack of 100 royalty fonts. Of course you're going to use them all. Why should ransom notes have all the fun?

[semsox]

I didn't get a chance to see Saturday's game live, but the archive up on-line looks pretty much the same as Friday's game did.  Was it much better quality than what this archive looks like or am I just losing it?

[bnr24]

I didn't get a chance to see Saturday's game live, but the archive up on-line looks pretty much the same as Friday's game did.  Was it much better quality than what this archive looks like or am I just losing it?

It actually was much better Saturday.  The women's game was awful quality video for me, but the men's game looked much more high quality in real time.  (Admittedly, I haven't looked at the archives for Saturday yet.)

[Rosey]

Women's game looks like crap (SD). I wonder why Lynah video quality is so schizophrenicinconsistent? If they could do it for last Saturday night, why not today?