Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...Lovely Spam, Wonderful E-mail and Telemarketing Spam...

We've all likely had about a hundred calls from "Rachel" at "Cardholder Services". This telemarketing-robocalling scam has been around for years. Several of the vermin perpetrating this garbage were shut down, but others have taken up the call, so to speak, and "Rachel" lives on. Apparently there are quite a few idiots out there who will give out their credit card number to the piece of excrement cold-calling their phone. There is indeed a sucker born every minute.

I've reported every instance to the FTC

https://complaints.donotcall.gov/complaint/complaintcheck.aspx

and of course all of my phones are listed with the Do Not Call Registry. Sadly, there is one little problem: Criminals don't seem to care about breaking the law by robocalling, nor do they seem inclined to take the time to see if my number is on the DNC or not. The cads.

Robocalls are a subset of the wider universe of criminal behavior taking place on our communication wires and airwaves. In this cesspool, I include robocalls, junk faxes, spam emails, hacking of banks, stores, and other financial operations even including the treasury of my own state. The miscreants range from lone, bored teenagers creating crude phishing emails from "Bank of Amerika" to boiler room operations here and abroad, to massive hack attacks on our financial infrastructure. The scariest endpoint is having one of these rogue operations take control of a power plant, which is at least theoretically possible via the 'net; I don't want to think about the consequences of that one.

The question we are all asking is this: Why isn't someone doing something about it!!??

Someone is, but the effort isn't even close to adequate. Both in government and industry, experts are trying to keep ahead of the criminals. The technology of our networks themselves makes it possible to cover one's tracks to the point of being invisible to law enforcement. Thus, hackers, telemarketers, and other thieves can ply their trade without fear of discovery. There is even a "dark internet" hidden from those who don't know how to access it, where what happens on the internet stays out of sight. Supposedly one can buy weapons, drugs, and other stuff you don't find at Amazon.com. Perhaps most importantly, the politics of the situation perpetuates it. Many, if not most, of the major internet hacks come from China, and are most likely government-sponsored. Ditto for Russia. There are telemarketing sweatshops in India that call via leased VOIP lines here in the US, and show up as spoofed (faked) numbers on your caller ID.

I'm particularly upset today over a message from the "IRS", informing us that we owe $4,785 dollars and are in violation of some statue or other. Calling the number in the message (generally a bad thing to do) connected us to a boiler-room operation staffed by people with a very clear Indian accent. No racist connotations here, children, but that's the accent they had. They keyed their scam by telephone number, and were quite confused when I gave them the direct line to the real IRS. More on them in a moment.

It is a sad state of affairs that criminals have access to more and better technology than their victims and our protectors.

There are a few common threads here. First and foremost, this garbage is all perpetrated by criminals, hoping to separate the suckers from their money. And because their marks are either stupid, greedy, or both, many of them actually respond, thinking they are getting something they are not entitled to have, such as Viagra without a prescription, their share of a Nigerian prince's ill-gotten oil money, a no-interest credit card, and so on. Fear of the IRS is a corollary which can get the weasels in your electronic door as well. Caveat emptor, as always.

I'm not a Big-Government supporter by any means, but this is an issue where our leaders have failed us. Yes, some of the criminals have been caught, but many more jump in to take their place, and most of these newer and nastier vermin are located overseas, immune from prosecution. Add to that, the carriers themselves, phone and broadband alike, are either too overwhelmed to do anything about this inundation, or are simply satisfied to receive the fees from the bottom-feeders or those who resell the service to them.

The Internet is supposedly an international operation, and "solutions" such as isolating Russia or China, or Nigeria from US traffic would hurt more people than it would help. (Well, OK, maybe cutting off Nigeria wouldn't be a tragedy, but I digress.) Still, I DO think there should be sanctions based on the criminal traffic coming from a particular nation.

So, we come back around to what we peons can do about all this. We can try to recruit our Congressmen to get to work on this issue. Ultimately, that is how we will have to fix the problem. In this case, it takes a government to stop the juggernaut. In the meantime, the only thing left for us victims to do is to report, report, and report. Sign up for the Do Not Call Registry, and tattle on anyone who violates it. Forward spam emails (with headers) to a service like SpamCop, which will find and notify the ISP involved. Get the telemarketer's phone number from Caller ID, and trace it down, using Google to start. In other words, Fight Back!

I did track the phone number from the IRS (Indian Robbing Scoundrels) to its VOIP provider, and that particular number was shut down. I'm sure, however, that the Banglore Bad Guys were able to crank up another US number within a few moments maximum. Just like smashing a cockroach; a dozen skitter out to take its place.

Perhaps the saddest commentary is from the IRS (the real one) itself. Its website has a link for reporting scams such as the one attempted on us. The first question:  "How much did you give the scammer?" There's a sucker born every minute, I guess, and criminals are very adept at finding them.

Yosemite Slam

Yosemite Sam, character copyright Warner Brothers Studios, image courtesy of  dailyinspires.com

I've been a lover of Apple products from almost the beginning. My very second computer was a Mac Plus with a whopping one MEG (yes MEGABYTE) of RAM. (My first computer was a TI 99 that didn't do much but hey, it was a computer!) I've since owned or been responsible for the purchase of well over one hundred Apple Macs, not to mention an equal number of iPhones and iPads, half a dozen or so iPods, and even a Newton. I keep hoping for Apple to get into the PACS/EMR game, as their approach to an interface would hopefully provide us with the usability and friendliness so sadly and sorely lacking in the current offerings.

While some might accuse me of being an Apple fanboy, and willing to swallow anything and everything they deliver, I must go public with a huge complaint.

My brand-new Macbook Pro Retina came with MacOSX 10.10, code named Yosemite, after the park and not Sam. It has not quite been trouble-free. In particular, it is affected by some WiFi bug that causes a random disconnect on the average of every five minutes or so. When this happens, one has to turn WiFi off and then on again, and this usually resets the problem.  I will anticipate doing this about 5 or 6 times while writing this piece.

This issue has now been reported thousands of times on multiple threads on the Apple Support Community bulletin board. Apple has released a few updates and we are now on 10.10.2, but still no WiFi joy. If you google the issue, you will find thousands of additional reports.

There have been other Apple issues of this magnitude over the years, such as the infamous iPhone 4 antenna glitch, wherein touching the metal band surrounding the phone which WAS the antenna shorted it out and limited the range of the internal radios. It didn't take Apple too long to fix this, mainly by giving away bumper cases (large rubber bands) that insulated the antenna from the user's grubby, moist paws.

The WiFi debacle, however, has not merited a response from Apple, nor will you see much mentioned about it in the mainstream Mac Media (MacLife, etc.) which depend on Apple's goodwill for their livelihood. For some reason Apple has chosen to neither acknowledge or fix this issue, and some others associated with Yosemite. The consensus is that Apple shoved 10.10 out the door too quickly, perhaps trying to keep things current with the last hardware release. All I know is that the WiFi reception, which is rather critical in a laptop, sucks, and it isn't getting fixed. The crowd posting on the Community board has offered numerous solutions, erase this, redo that, go into the guts of the OS and tweak thus-and-so...and none of them work for any period of time.

Frankly, I've had some intermittent WiFi problems with various Macs and iPads over the years that I haven't been able to document, but task me none the less. I'm convinced, for example, that my wife's original Macbook Air disrupted other user's WiFi, but I could never get that to happen consistently. Given the fact that the WiFi protocols are out there to be matched by the folks that make the routers and receivers, there really shouldn't be a problem, right?

But there is. It has been said that President Obama chose Joe Biden to be his Vice President as an insurance policy: no one would even consider impeaching Mr. Obama because we would then be left with Biden as Commander in Chief. (Excuse me while I wait for the nausea to pass.)  Similarly, Apple knows quite well that Microsoft is its insurance policy. Having Windoze 8.1 installed via Bootcamp on my same Macbook Retina, I can tell you it is absolutely horrid to use, having been written more for their Surface tablet (which I'm told is also a dog) and not for a run-of-the-mill keyboard/mouse setup. It is splashy and colorful, and full of features that do nothing but get in the way of actually using it. For me, and most Mac aficionados, switching completely to WinBlows is a complete last-ditch resort, which won't happen unless MacOSX reaches the point of total shut-down.

Still, Apple, and CEO Tim Cook, need to realize that they are testing the patience of their users, especially those of us who use these (formerly) wonderful machines for mission-critical and even life-saving applications. Sooner or later, someone will step into the void you are creating with your indifference toward a really serious problem.

Fix this. Now. Please. Next time, I won't say "Please".

An Hour and Thirty-Five Seconds With George W. Bush

It's a hard life, but someone has to do it.

I'm writing from frigid Chicago, where the air temperature is something around 20 degrees, and the wind chill is 50 below numbness. I'm here for the 100th Anniversary Edition of RSNA, and one must brave adverse conditions to attend so momentous an occasion.

If you are reading my illustrious blog, you must have some connection to radiology, and thus you've probably attended RSNA at least once. If so, you know that the most important part of the whole meeting is the parties that come after hours. In years past, the big vendors have put on some really incredible soirees, with open bars and buffets overflowing with prime rib and other expensive delicacies. 

Then came the economic bust, and the parties became fewer and further between.  But this year, there seem to be a few more than I've seen recently. In fact, I received about four invitations for tonight alone. Fortunately, the decision as to which to attend was quite easy. Zotec, our billing company, delivered the most incredible RSNA experience I've ever, well, experienced: An evening with former President George W. Bush in the Grand Ballroom of the Trump Hotel. 

Zotec is apparently doing quite well; the teaser on the video screens behind the homey staging with two armchairs touted the processing of $1 Billion in charges. I'm not sure what the average percentage of their fees might be, but if we assume even a low 7%, the Law Brothers who run the company are raking in $70M. Not too shabby in this day and age. 

Anyway, as a very good Zotec customer, Mrs. Dalai and I, as well as one of my former partners/new bosses were invited not only to the event, but to a photo-op with Mr. Bush as well. We arrived early, donned our wrist-bands, and queued up for our few seconds with the Man. We were most amused by the Secret Service agents with somewhat ill-fitting suits and earphones scoping out the crowd of mostly older docs and their wives. 

When our turn for the photo came, the President turned and greeted us, and put his arm around Mrs. Dalai and I, and we all smiled for the camera. (I'll post it when it arrives in the mail.) In the process, I said, "Mr. President, we miss you dearly," to which he chuckled, and Mrs. Dalai followed up with "Can we get you back?" W chuckled again and shook his head. "I'd be going back alone!" To which we responded, "You would still have a lot of support." We said our goodbyes, and proceeded on to the Trump Grand Ballroom (which wasn't all that large...someone needs to be fired) where the armchair talk shortly commenced.  

The format was informal, with Scott Law, Zotec CEO, sitting adjacent to the President on the stage. Mr. Law would ask a question, and Mr. Bush would answer, to enthusiastic applause. I won't try to reproduce the conversation, but several observations are in order. First and foremost, W is a witty, humble, and eloquent (yes, I said eloquent!) speaker. Over the course of the hour, we laughed and (almost) cried with him. We were taken to the heart of the Oval Office, Ground Zero, and the classroom in Florida where Mr. Bush was informed of the 9/11 attacks. In all of these scenarios, Mr. Bush conveyed a sense of duty to his country, humility in face of unimaginable responsibility, and fierce devotion to the defense of the nation he led for eight years. His goal after hearing of the airliners hitting the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon, was personified as the protection of the little girl who was reading a story to him that fateful morning. 

Having heard President Clinton speak at RSNA a few years back, I was struck by the huge discrepancy in the perception versus the reality of both men. Mr. Clinton, whom some think the greatest President ever, spoke in a disjointed manner, and spent much of the talk tooting his own horn about how much he had been doing for the poor in Third-World nations, and chastising us rich doctors to help. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, was witty, humble when the moment called for it, and proud when appropriate. And he spoke very clearly, very articulately, and again, eloquently. Those who have developed a visceral hatred of the man won't want to hear it, but W may well have been the most honest, loyal, and capable man to occupy the office in a very, very long time. He was labeled a "cowboy" and "stupid" by a media and a Leftist bunch that couldn't stand the fact that he didn't act like their vision of a Harvard-trained leader (he did receive an MBA from the Harvard Business School). For your information, President Bush used the word "strategy" about a dozen times, and he pronounced it properly. 

I thank Zotec for giving us the opportunity to see how someone with character behaves when given the greatest and hardest task known, in contrast to what we have seen on the news daily for the past several years. I am humbled and honored to have been in the presence of a truly great man. 

And I should also thank Zotec for doing a damn good job with our billing!

Meeting With The PACS Giants And Other RSNA Tales

There is a touch of melancholy for me here at RSNA 2014 to go with the 20 degree nip in the air. I'm not one to dwell much on the deep meanings of beginings and endings, but while strolling the exhibits today, I realized that I've been attending this monster of a convention on and off since I was a Nuclear Medicine Fellow in 1990. And it occurs to me that since I'm now semi-retired, it is possible that I won't return next year. But we'll see how that goes.

One of the joys of RSNA, and my fame, or at least notariety in the field, is the chance to meet up with those far more promienent in the field than I. Hence the title of this piece. I had the wonderful opportunity to share a cappuchino with two giants of PACS, Mike Cannavo and Dr. David Clunie. Mike I've known for years, but I had only communicated via email and AuntMinnie forums with David. I was very fortunate to get both of them together on the same couch for a few moments today. These two gentlemen have been involved in the business since before anyone could even spell PACS. They both have an amazing level of knowledge, not to mention various documentation, of those early days, and I'm urging them to collaborate on a book.  Maybe I would qualify for a footnote...

I am occasionally accosted, I mean greeted, by some of my loyal readers. In fact, when I stopped at one booth to say hello, a friend who was mentioned in an earlier post and was apparently embarassed by the fact that it proves he's one of my readers spotted me and exclaimed, "It's the Dalai! Shall I kiss your ring? Shall I kiss your ass?" To which I replied, "Not unless someone gets it on camera!"

Today was my informatics day, and I heard some talks about portable platforms, and SOA's, and image sharing. SOA's, aka Service Oriented Architecture, as presented by Dr. Paul Chang  are fascinating constructs with huge potential. Dr. Chang showed an example from U of C wherein the SOA determines if the patient has appropriate labs ordered, and if not, it initiates the order to acquire them. So much for us humans.

I also stopped by a booth or two.  (This is starting to sound like a third-grader's rendition of his trip to Disney World, but for me, that's quite appropriate.)

In my feeble-minded semi-retired state, I've decided not to continue my practice of posting every last little detail about demos and things. You really have to get your own hands on the software (well, the keyboard and mouse, but you know what I mean) to determine if something will work for you or not.  I do pride myself on attempting to wear multiple hats when I evaluate a program, which I think is the key to my success as my group's CTO as well as the premier radiologist PACS blogger (still the only one, but I'll take it).  I'd like to think I can make any commercial PACS client work; that's my ex-engineer hat in action. But I think I'm reasonably good as well at figuring out if something will work for my least-technically-savvy former partner, the one who calls from airplanes wanting to know how to adjust the volume on his laptop. So, in my new, lazier, partially-retired personna, I'm just going to sketch out the very basics and leave the picayune details for another time.

Here we go. I stopped at TeraRecon, and had a look at their latest offering, deconstructed PACS, which basically utilizes TR as a PACS overlay, uniting data from multiple data silos (coming from the Midwest I'm not used to anything other than corn and grain being stored in silos) and adding in the magic of advanced processing for a sort of super enterprise PACS.  From what I could see, there are still a few details to be worked out before the ssytem will work as I would want it to, but the TR folks are on their way. Ultimately, the overlay will require the ability to check for priors in all the silos (which they seem to have almost mastered) and be able to talk back and forth to the underlying PACS to manage workflow, which seems to be on its way. I was most amused and honored to be treated with equal deference to the chairman of a very well-known radiology department who was there at the time. The chairman had actually heard my Laws of PACS talk a while back, and urged me to keep up the good fight. And so I shall.

To be scrupulously fair, Visage has a similar approach to overlying PACS with an advanced imaging platform, but I ran out of time before I could see their latest. Apologies to Sam and Brad. I'll look at it ASAP. ***

I should break off into a separate post, but the following entry will be fairly short.

About three weeks ago, Agfa placed a test version of IMPAX 7 Agility PACS in our reading room, and I was able to have a few hours of playtime with it. I had promised not to report anything until talking with the important people at Agfa, and I usually honor my promises.  As a followup to the home test, I met with some Very important people in a spartan back room of the lavish Agfa booth. You would think that Agfa would not be happy with me, given the rather brutal treatment I've given them over the years. You would be wrong. Agfa has always been gracious in accepting my acerbic criticism and improving where possible. Agility is no exception, save the fact that I didn't really have to criticize as much as usual. Gone (FINALLY) is the tool-toggling I've whined about for years.  Available (FINALLY) is workable user-level hanging protocol creation. And so on. I had some complaints/observations about the way the latter worked, and some of my ideas had already been incorporated between my two recent exposures, and others hopefully will appear soon. There is very tight integration with the "top three" vendors of things like advanced processing and nuclear medicine. For example, my Segami Oasis will come up within the PACS viewport as if it were part of the PACS itself. For better or worse, the port basically reverts to the incoming programing, mouse-controls and all. Could there be a more unified approach to this? I'll have to play some more. Agfa has utilized hot-spots on the image for common controls like window-level, an approach I'm not fond of, for what that's worth.

Agility is considerably different than IMPAX 6 (once code-named Odyssey). It is a worthy successor, and frankly is somewhat more mainstream in operation and appearance than 6. When asked how I would grade it, I said that with the current improvements, I would give it a B+/A-. It has a way to go, but it does represent a significant step in the right direction.

As always, more to come!

*** ADDENDUM!!

I wandered by the Visage booth on my way back to the educational sessions from my $20 mediocre lunch, and I stopped to see my good friend Brad. Given the 10 minutes I could spare, he and the apps folks managed to give me a quick but thorough view of the latest version. It is impressive, all the more so to realize that the system operates with server-side rendering. This allows platform neutrality (it will run on my Mac, iPad, etc.) and really rapid loading of huge datasets since they don't actually go anywhere. Visage has outfitted a Very large healthcare operation with its version of a Deconstructed PACS, operated from a single main server (of course with failover backup) and six rendering servers. Brad tells me this configuration can handle tens of millions of images and hundreds of simultaneous users and still be at only 20% of its capacity. 

Visage has some very nice features such as a lesion marking function that gives volumetric information as well as orthoganal dimensions, nice for RECIST reporting. In its PACS implementation, Visage can dive into silos and match exams, and has a better hanging protocol than a new PACS version I've examined recently. It can handle all modalities, and even can produce MIPS from breast tomosynthesis, something I haven't seen before, altough it won't make me want to start back reading mammograms.  There is of course very powerful advanced imaging as well. 

I do have to point out two deficiencies, which Brad tells me nicely are only problematic for old, senile vacuum-tube loving knuckle draggers like myself (OK, he didn't say it that way, but I don't want you to think I have any sort of elevated opinion of myself). First, the level of automation of things like coronary vessel segmentation is limited. Visage's philosophy is that automated detection is not perfect, and the human eye may better detect a more aberrant vessel path. That's probably true, but I do like the joy of one button operation. (Anyone remember the line from the Lost in Space Movie where Major West launches the Jupiter 2 by saying "...And the monkey flips the switch...")

Secondly, this deconstructed PACS is designed to be driven by an EMR/EHR, speech recognition, RIS, etc. What Visage has declined to provide, and Brad says I don't need, is a worklist! Here we disagree. I come from a PACS driven workflow shop, and I like it that way. Apparently there are third parties who can provide a worklist, but I still think Visage should write their own. I'll be glad to help. 

And to my friends at Merge, please don't worry about the omission of your booth. I walked by a few times and you have all been very busy, hopefully with paying customers. I promise to review the updated PACS and other offerings online with you at a later date. Two days at RSNA is just not enough!!

EMR: Round Peg, Square Hole From The Sunrise Rounds Blog

Dalai's note:  My rather vocal presentation of my views on medical IT have earned me an international speaking career. It is sad to see that nothing much has changed over all the time I've been blogging and speaking on this issue. In fact, even though it is more ubiquitous, medical software remains as useless and confounding as ever. It is gratifying, however, to see others take up the cause of improving this potentially deadly deficit. As cross-published on KevinMD.com, this piece from Dr.  James Salwitz, an oncologist who blogs on SunriseRounds.com, takes a similar approach to lambast those who dump their (soft)wares on an unsuspecting medical community.

A 57-year-old doctor I know is retiring to teach at a local junior college. He is respected, enjoys practicing medicine and is beloved by his patients; therefore, I was surprised. While he is frustrated by the complexity of health insurance, tired by the long hours and angered by defensive medicine, the final straw is that he can not stand the world of the EMR.

As an Electronic Medical Record junkie, I would quit if I had to practice without a computerized information system. These programs are a dramatic improvement over the paper and pen way of keeping records. Still, I understand the onerous problems. Data entry is clumsy, painful and takes hours. Information is stored in a nearly random manner, not much better than papers tossed into a cardboard box. Every EMR program is different and none share vital patient data. Training is lousy, access is non-intuitive, support is spotty, costs are high and any gains seem to be countered by poorly timed system crashes.

Unhappy to lose a physician from our medical community, I find myself musing about what has gone wrong with a critical technology that has such shining potential. Computer systems fly giant aircraft around the world without incident, handle trillions of dollars of financial trade without a penny lost and allow hundreds of millions to tweet, Facebook or blog. Why is medical IT so bad?

The major problem with EMRs, as they are conceived and as they presently exist, is that they are round pegs in square holes. They are designed to gather and store information; shiny electronic file cabinets, and they are built around the primary function of billing; grinding out ICD-9 and CPT codes. That would be fine if that was what doctors actually do with their time and if making money was the primary goal of practicing medicine. However, surprise, surprise, what doctors really do is treat patients. EMRs often hinder, not assist, the giving of medical care.

A physician’s normal function is to interface between objective biology and the complexity of each human life. Often called “the art” of medicine, it is the act of bridging science to individual reality. Ask questions; test; collect information. Attempt to organize by creating of a list of possibilities, a differential diagnosis. Assimilate, screen and sift that data until you reach a final diagnosis. Then, implement therapy using science and the results of research, with compassion, patience and the skill of a teacher.

A functional electronic health delivery system would assist in this systematic decision process, actively participating in the query and analysis, adding scientific knowledge and observations based on state-of-the art recommendations. Help the doctor build the differential. Recommend testing or therapeutic alternatives. The EMR should be aligned with the doctor’s goals, which are the patient’s health.

The GPS in my car is first rate. Data input is verbal and flawless. It tells speed, direction, and continuously adjusts recommendations based on my progress and traffic impediments. It even throws in alerts about the weather. In other words, the GPS not only stores data, it tells me what to do with it, and is constantly updated by events far beyond my windshield, which I have not yet considered. Someday soon, that GPS will actually drive my car.

A health computational system should have, at a minimum, the functionality of that GPS. Easy data entry and access. Flawless expanding storage. Clear output. Actionable recommendations and observations, based not only on the patient, but on the science of medicine. An EMR should be updated continuously by clinical information such as labs, vital signs and tests, as well as the most recent scientific discoveries, even if they are made halfway around the world, delivering at the bedside the vast resources of Big Data. Help me care for the patient by complementing my work.

As the practice of medicine becomes logarithmically more complex with the expanding potential of genomic or “Personalized Medicine,” advanced information technology will be vital. No doctor will be able to assimilate an individual patient’s genome and thousands of actionable variables into a differential diagnosis or comprehensive treatment. The key will be real-time EMR support.

To date no one has taken the potential or complexity of EMRs seriously. The assumption is that these systems can be built by cottage industries, with the result that there are hundreds of rudimentary programs, all grossly inadequate. The average GPS is far more functional.

This slowly expanding area of IT research is called translational bioinformatics, but there have been relatively few dollars invested by the NIH in the basic science. Data input remains primitive. We have no backbone on which to create a national network to maintain and track individual records. There is no integration with decision making software or connection to research troves. Medicine relies on the doctor to connect the myriad dots, even as he or she is up at midnight, typing elementary progress notes into elementary office systems.

Doctors need and desire help in taking care of their patients, but instead they have a tool designed for secretaries and insurance auditors. We must re-address the goals of clinical IT to improve, empower and give medical care. The future of our patients and the future of health, depend on it. No amount of frustration and burned out physicians will force patient lives into slots built for dollars.

Epic Fails And Deadly IT Cultures (An OPINION Piece)

The Ebola Virus...Image courtesy of scienceblogs.com

It's bad enough that a fellow from Liberia by the name of Thomas Eric Duncan through hubris, stupidity, or simply bad luck brought Ebola to our shores. He did ultimately seek medical attention in the Emergency Room of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas when he became symptomatic with the characteristic fever and pain of an Ebola infection. In fact, he presented twice to the Dallas ER. In between his two visits, Mr. Duncan was set loose on a city of well over a million souls while his disease was at its most infectious level. (He has since died of the disease, and sadly, one of the nurses who cared for him now has it. Let us pray for her speedy recovery.) How could this breach of public health have happened? It seems to have something to do with IT, specifically, the configuration of the hospital's EHR.

CNBC quotes Jonathan Bush (as it turns out, Jonathan is the nephew and cousin of the former Presidents...hat tip to Ranjan), head of Athenahealth:

The failure of a Dallas hospital's electronic medical record system to flag a man who turned out to be infected with the Ebola virus underscores how clunky, outdated and inefficient health information systems typically are in the U.S., a medical IT CEO charged Friday.

"The worst supply chain in our society is the health information supply chain," said Bush. . . "It's just a wonderfully poignant example, reminder of how disconnected our health-care system is."

"It's just a very Stone-Age sector, because it's very conservative," Bush said. "Hospital health care is still in the era of pre-Internet software."

"The hyperbole should not be directed at Epic or those guys at Health Texas," Bush said. "The hyperbole has to be directed at the fact that health care is islands of information trying to separately manage a massively complex network . . . People trying to recreate their own micro-Internet inside their own little biosphere . . . that'll never, never, never be excellent," Bush said. "There's no 'network effect' in health care today."

How does this apply to Mr. Duncan unleashing Ebola in the heart of Texas?

The hospital Thursday night said when Duncan was first examined Sept. 25 by a nurse, he was asked a series of questions, including whether he had traveled outside of the U.S. in the prior month.

"He said that he had been in Africa," the hospital said in a statement. "The nurse entered that information in the nursing portion of the electronic medical record."

But it turns out that answer—which could have alerted doctors of the possibility Duncan had Ebola—was not relayed electronically to them because of "a flaw" in the way doctors' workflow portions of the electronic health records interacts with the nursing portions of the EHR.

"In our electronic health records, there are separate physician and nursing workflows," the hospital said. "The documentation of the travel history was located in the nursing workflow portion of the EHR, and was designed to provide a high reliability nursing process to allow for the administration of influenza vaccine under a physician-delegated standing order. As designed, the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician's standard workflow."

Of course, that particular problem at that particular hospital is now fixed. But . . .

"We have made this change to increase the visibility and documentation of the travel question in order to alert all providers," Texas Health said. " We feel that this change will improve the early identification of patients who may be at risk for communicable diseases, including Ebola."

Bush noted that typically when problems like the flaw in Texas Health's EHR system are fixed, "they're fixed only at the place where they appeared."

"Those mistakes are happening constantly," Bush said.

But, "philosophically I think hospitals should get out of the business of trying to program computer systems, and expand in the business of treating patients. But that's a standard thing that goes wrong with millions of configurations" of EHRs, he said.

Mr. Bush was quite tactful, but the implication of his statement is truly astounding. He is saying, perhaps not quite in so many words, that the IT department of the Texas Health hospital in Dallas, by poorly implementing (my opinion, not necessarily his) poorly designed (again, my opinion, not necessarily his) software, could be responsible for a disaster. This glitch has potentially allowed Ebola to spread further than it would have had Mr. Duncan been put immediately into confinement upon his first presentation. To be fair, the patient had been in contact with others before his first ER trip; still, we can assume he had more interaction with more people than he might have otherwise. We can only wait and see how many of his family members and acquaintences come down with the often-fatal disease. I should also mention that the ER physician should probably have thought to ask about foreign travel when presented with a feverish African national presumably speaking with an accent.

There is much online about Epic, Presby's EHR provider. Google will supply link after link after link if you so desire. There are several take-away messages: Epic has severe interconnectivity / interoperability problems, and it is a HUGE political player, with its founder Judith Faulkner being quite the Obama supporter. Faulkner, and Epic employees, have given millions to Mr. Obama and other Democratic causes. Epic has received significant federal subsidy money, and it is up for an $11 Billion government contract. Michelle Malkin also reports that:

Faulkner, an influential Obama campaign finance bundler, served as an adviser to David Blumenthal. He’s the White House health information technology guru in charge of dispensing the federal electronic medical records subsidies that Faulkner pushed President Obama to adopt. Faulkner also served on the same committee Blumenthal chaired.

Cozy arrangement, that.

I'm straying a little off-topic here, but I think it is unlikely in the extreme that Epic will shoulder even the slightest blame for Mr. Duncan's Dallas destruction. After all, as we say in the trade, PBKAC, Problem (was) Between Keyboard and Chair. In other words, it wasn't Epic's fault that whatever IT employee or committee failed to connect the dots and the map the critical foreign travel field from the  nurses' intake screen to the doctors' review screen. Oops. So sorry.

Personally, for what little it's worth, I do NOT let Epic, or any other software company, off the hook quite so easily, nor do I bow to the IT departments which often control such software but don't grasp the criticality of the workflow they are now governing, let alone the workflow itself.

I've ranted for pages and pages about image sharing, and how it is malpractice for patient images to be essentially held hostage by the IT and other administrative types who are adamant that the competing hospital across town (or across the street) will NEVER EVER be allowed to touch their precious data. And I've yowled and whined about PACS software that was clearly NOT written for use by any practicing radiologist I've ever met.

Please indulge me while I add to these rants.

I had the occasion to accompany Mrs. Dalai to her annual (8 years postponed) internist visit. Her doc showed me how much fun it is NOT to order something as simple as a PA and Lateral CXR in our illustrious EMR's bilious CPOE (Computerized Physician Order Entry) system. It is a complete miracle that any order at all is entered correctly in this absolute abortion of an interface, and I'm not at all surprised when the wrong order comes through for the wrong indication. The electronic chart function isn't any better. Finding a particular lab value can be an exercise in agony (akin to using some PACS I can name) and it just goes downhill from there. When I asked around to find out who OK'd this particular piece of garbage, I was met with shrugs and silence.

Do you sense a familiar refrain? (Lawyers please note...THIS IS ALL MY VERY OWN HUMBLE OPINION, as is every other word that I have ever written or ever will write, unless quoted from someone else, and worth every cent my dear readers paid for it.) Once again, here in the Health Care Field of Dreams, we have badly written, badly designed software, created with minimal input from those who have to use it, selected and then implemented by IT types who also don't have to use it and don't understand enough about those who do to get it done right. This has to stop. Right. Bloody. Now. Hit CNTL-ALT-Delete and start over.

With Epic and the government having their hands deep inside each others' panties, we may well be stuck with these unusable systems for the foreseeable future. (And as an aside, if you deconstruct the Meaningful Use rewards and penalties, doctors are being bribed to buy EHR's that have the certified and confirmed ability to transmit data to Washington, D.C., so again, we won't expect the government to do anything about anything.) But, the demise of Mr. Duncan, and no doubt dozens if not hundreds more that he inadvertently infected between his two ER visits may level the playing field.

It is clear that Epic's epic Dallas fail (which might not really be totally attributable to Epic per se, but rather to the way the product was set up in the field, not passing that one lil' bitty critical entry to where it should go), contributed to Mr. Duncan's being released when he should have been locked up in the local version of Wildfire. It is possible, just barely possible, that this tragic episode will awaken the public to the dangers inherent in the IT-controlled medical software industry and its acronymbysmal spawn, EHR's, CPOE's, and the occasional unruly PACS. Get enough people upset about this, and they will call their congressmen, and more importantly their lawyers. (I would submit that more gets done by class-action suit in this country than by Congress.)

I realize that replacing these huge legacy systems which were outdated before they were even conceived would cost somewhere in the trillions of dollars, and so I'm not holding my breath that this will ever happen. But maybe a few million and billion dollar suits and fines would get the attention of the Epics, the Cerners, McKessons, and all the others who create these nightmares. Or maybe, just maybe, the execs will read this, and the other rebellious propaganda we are starting to see online, and realize that they are causing damage rather than progress, and be inspired to turn it all around. I'm a staunch believer in the electronic record, PACS, computers, iPhones, Apple Watches, and anything else technical. This is the future, without question. But it has to be done right, and so far that hasn't happened.

We can hope that the late Mr. Duncan can accomplish in death what no one has yet been able to manage while alive.  We can hope, anyway...

Saving Candy Crush

What may seem obvious to some can be mysterious to others. Case in point: the introduction of Western-style toilets to parts of China. It was necessary to provide pictographic instructions to be sure the new equipment was utilized properly:

Assuming you have flown on a commercial airliner ever in your life, you've had to sit through what some would consider an equally-foolish instruction set: the safety briefing. This is how you buckle your seat belt, if the plane goes down somewhere it shouldn't, find the closest exit unless said exit is under water, in which case you should go elsewhere. And of course, if the oxygen masks should drop, grab them all for yourself and don't let anyone else have one unless they pay you a lot of money before they pass out.

In years past, we passengers have had no other entertainment during the safety spiel except for the airline magazine, and SkyMall catalog, and those get old fast. But about a year ago, the FAA allowed us to have our small personal electronic devices on during take-off and landing. And so, many of us have our phones or tablets running at all times, in Airplane Mode of course, playing Candy Crush while the frustrated flight attendants drone on about the unlikely possibility of a water landing on a trans-oceanic flight.

The flight attendants are not pleased about this. From the Wall Street Journal:

Lawyers for the nation’s largest flight-attendant union argued in federal court Friday to effectively reinstate a government ban on the use of electronic devices during takeoffs and landings.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is suing the Federal Aviation Administration, saying the agency notice last year that paved the way for fliers to use their devices throughout flights violated federal regulations that require passengers to stow all items during takeoffs and landings.

Justice Department lawyers representing the FAA say the agency’s guidance, which permitted fliers to keep smaller devices in their hands during all phases of flight, doesn’t violate the stowage rule because small devices aren’t governed by it. The two sides argued the case Friday to a three-judge panel with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. . .

Attorney Amanda Duré, who is representing the attendants union, said that since the policy change, many fliers have stopped listening to attendants’ emergency announcements and, in at least one incident, a tablet became a projectile during turbulence. The union also is concerned the devices could impede passengers’ exit from an aircraft during an emergency.

ONE tablet flew, and we have to take everyone's away. How do we know it wasn't thrown?

I have great respect for flight attendants. They don't have an easy job, and they have to deal with throngs of humanity, some of whom are more accustomed to the joys of Greyhound than The Friendly Skies. I remember the days when stewardesses (can I still use that term?) were all female, 22 years old and coiffed to the nines. This is no longer the case, for better or worse. But with the demise of "coffee, tea, or me," an element of customer service has gone by the wayside. There is at least a faint edge to the attitude of many attendants today, and downward spirals ala Alec Baldwin are not unheard of. I personally think the suit against the FAA is mostly a temper-tantrum, lashing out at the passengers who are now even more contemptuously ignoring the boring lecture that in a panic situation they would all forget anyway.

This adversarial situation does not have to continue. A little thinking outside the box, or at least inside a different box, could provide a very easy fix. It's time for the airlines to take a page from Disney's book. The Disney people know crowd control and safety better than most any other operation out there. I'm sure most of you have been to Disney World, or Disneyland, and thus you've been a passenger on Star Tours and the old Body Wars. While waiting the better part of a day for your 5 minutes on the ride, Disney entertains with various props and videos. In fact, just before boarding your StarFarter 2000, you will be shown this video:

As with comedy, it's all in the timing. . . We are all captive in the gate area while waiting to board the plane, and also while standing in line on the jetway while waiting on Ma and Pa Kettle to jam their entire life's possessions into the overhead bin. THIS is the time to show the safety video on strategically placed monitors! Make them funny, as Delta has started to do lately, and the message will get across far better than it does under the present system. Trust me and Disney, this will work!!!!

Here's one of the new Delta safety videos for your viewing pleasure:

If you think this might work, let the FAA and the airlines know your opinion. But please don't mention my name. I have some traveling to do, and I don't want to be the target of angry flight attendants. It seems they have some secret approaches to revenge:

1. Coded hand gestures
Flight attendants "employ all sorts of unofficial methods and codes" to deal with difficult fliers, reports Emma Messenger at the Daily Mail. A "subtle wag of a finger" behind someone's head means that he's lecherous and may get handsy (or worse) with the staff. To alert colleagues that a passenger is drunk, attendants cross their fingers over the hospitality cart.

2. High winds
At the end of a demanding flight, writes David Sedaris in The New Yorker, some attendants indulge in the peevish practice of "cropdusting" — silently passing wind as they walk down the aisle making their final checks. "Reclined in their seats, heads lolling to the side ... airplane passengers are prime fart targets," comments Maureen O'Connor at Gawker.

3. Dirty drinks
Ellen Simonette — author of Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: The Queen of Sky Blog — reminisces in The New York Times about the time a colleague took revenge on a loudmouthed passenger by making him "a very special drink" in the privacy of the galley, rubbing the rim of his glass on the plane's "filthy floor" before serving it up with a "devious smile."

4. Abusing their powers
We've all seen the seat-belt sign light up in midflight, though there isn't a hint of turbulence. Blame your attendants, says the Daily Mail's Messenger, who often switch it on so they can "have a nice cup of tea and gossip in peace."

5. Starting a blog
Countless flight attendants vent about passengers by blogging anonymously. Dubai-based blogger Tampax Towers recently railed against fliers who hold up security lines by wearing metal-studded jeans, while, over at These Wings Talk, a catty account of an experience with a "One-Eyed Cyclops Passenger" makes for surprising reading.

Coffee, Tea, or Dalai?

From The Healthcare Blog: How To Discourage A Doctor

Dalai's note:  A piece by Dr. Richard Gunderman posted on TheHealthcareBlog.com.  It is unclear whether or not Dr. Gunderman's "discovery" is a real document or not. Still, it would seem to explain a lot of what we are seeing in healthcare today...

How To Discourage a Doctor

Not accustomed to visiting hospital executive suites, I took my seat in the waiting room somewhat warily.

Seated across from me was a handsome man in a well-tailored three-piece suit, whose thoroughly professional appearance made me – in my rumpled white coat, sheaves of dog-eared paper bulging from both pockets – feel out of place.

Within a minute, an administrative secretary came out and escorted him into one of the offices. Exhausted from a long call shift and lulled by the quiet, I started to doze off. Soon roused by the sound of my own snoring, I started and looked about.

That was when I spotted the document on an adjacent chair. Its title immediately caught my eye: “How to Discourage a Doctor.”

No one else was about, so I reached over, picked it up, and began to leaf through its pages. It became apparent immediately that it was one of the most remarkable things I had ever read, clearly not meant for my eyes. It seemed to be the product of a healthcare consulting company, presumably the well-dressed man’s employer. Fearing that he would return any moment to retrieve it, I perused it as quickly as possible. My recollection of its contents is naturally somewhat imperfect, but I can reproduce the gist of what it said.

“The stresses on today’s hospital executive are enormous. They include a rapidly shifting regulatory environment, downward pressures on reimbursement rates, and seismic shifts in payment mechanisms. Many leaders naturally feel as though they are building a hospital in the midst of an earthquake. With prospects for revenue enhancement highly uncertain, the best strategy for ensuring a favorable bottom line is to reduce costs. And for the foreseeable future, the most important driver of costs in virtually every hospital will be its medical staff.

“Though physician compensation accounts for only about 8% of healthcare spending, decisions that physicians strongly influence or make directly – such as what medication to prescribe, whether to perform surgery, and when to admit and discharge a patient from the hospital – have been estimated to account for as much as 80% of the nation’s healthcare budget. To maintain a favorable balance sheet, hospital executives need to gain control of their physicians. Most hospitals have already taken an important step in this direction by employing a growing proportion of their medical staff.

“Transforming previously independent physicians into employees has increased hospital influence over their decision making, an effect that has been successfully augmented in many centers by tying physician compensation directly to the execution of hospital strategic initiatives. But physicians have invested many years in learning their craft, they hold their professional autonomy in high esteem, and they take seriously the considerable respect and trust with which many patients still regard them. As a result, the challenge of managing a hospital medical staff continues to resemble herding cats.

“Merely controlling the purse strings is not enough. To truly seize the reins of medicine, it is necessary to do more, to get into the heads and hearts of physicians. And the way to do this is to show physicians that they are not nearly so important as they think they are. Physicians have long seen the patient-physician relationship as the very center of the healthcare solar system. As we go forward, they must be made to feel that this relationship is not the sun around which everything else orbits, but rather one of the dimmer peripheral planets, a Neptune or perhaps Uranus.

“How can this goal be achieved? A complete list of proven tactics and strategies is available to our clients, but some of the more notable include the following:

“Make healthcare incomprehensible to physicians. It is no easy task to baffle the most intelligent people in the organization, but it can be done. For example, make physicians increasingly dependent on complex systems outside their domain of expertise, such as information technology and coding and billing software. Ensure that such systems are very costly, so that solo practitioners and small groups, who naturally cannot afford them, must turn to the hospital. And augment their sense of incompetence by making such systems user-unfriendly and unreliable. Where possible, change vendors frequently.

“Promote a sense of insecurity among the medical staff. A comfortable physician is a confident physician, and a confident physician usually proves difficult to control. To undermine confidence, let it be known that physicians’ jobs are in jeopardy and their compensation is likely to decline. Fire one or more physicians, ensuring that the entire medical staff knows about it. Hire replacements with a minimum of fanfare. Place a significant percentage of compensation “at risk,” so that physicians begin to feel beholden to hospital administration for what they manage to eke out.

“Transform physicians from decision makers to decision implementers. Convince them that their professional judgment regarding particular patients no longer constitutes a reliable compass. Refer to such decisions as anecdotal, idiosyncratic, or simply insufficiently evidence based. Make them feel that their mission is not to balance benefits and risks against their knowledge of particular patients, but instead to apply broad practice guidelines to the care of all patients. Hiring, firing, promotion, and all rewards should be based on conformity to hospital-mandated policies and procedures.

“Subject physicians to escalating productivity expectations. Borrow terminology and methods from the manufacturing industry to make them think of themselves as production-line workers, then convince them that they are not working sufficiently hard and fast. Show them industry standards and benchmarks in comparison to which their output is subpar. On the off chance that their productivity compares favorably, cite numerous reasons that such benchmarks are biased and move the bar progressively higher, from the 75th “Increase physicians’ responsibility while decreasing their authority. For example, hold physicians responsible for patient satisfaction scores, but ensure that such scores are influenced by a variety of factors over which physicians have little or no control, such as information technology, hospitality of staff members, and parking. The goal of such measures is to induce a state that psychologists refer to as “learned helplessness,” a growing sense among physicians that whatever they do, they cannot meaningfully influence healthcare, which is to say the operations of the hospital.

“Above all, introduce barriers between physicians and their patients. The more directly physicians and patients feel connected to one another, the greater the threat to the hospital’s control. When physicians think about the work they do, the first image that comes to mind should be the hospital, and when patients realize they need care, they should turn first to the hospital, not a particular physician. One effective technique is to ensure that patient-physician relationships are frequently disrupted, so that the hospital remains the one constant. Another is. . . .”

The sound of a door roused me again. The man in the three-piece suit emerged from the office, he and the hospital executive to whom he had been speaking shaking hands and smiling. As he turned, I looked about. Where was “How to Discourage a Doctor?” It was not on the table, nor was it on the chair where I had first found it. “Will he think I took it?” I wondered. But instead of stopping to look for it, he simply walked out of the office. As I watched him go, one thing became clear: having read that document, I suddenly felt a lot less discouraged.

"Value-based care: Bad for doctors, bad for patients?"

Dalai's note:  Here is another piece cross published from KevinMD.com. I have a huge level of antipathy toward "Value-Based" reimbursement. From the beginning, I smelled a rat. How could we in radiology in particular prove the "value" of what we do in a manner that would convince those who hold the purse strings that we should actually be paid for our efforts? If, for example, we tell the ER doc that his order for a CT is inappropriate, we save the system money, and risk a lawsuit. If we let it go through, and it is negative as expected, we are dinged for charging the system for something that didn't produce "value". In other words, we are screwed either way.  What follows is a much better analysis of a sorry situation...

Value-based health care is antithetic to patient-centered care. Value-based health care is also diametrically opposed to excellence, transparency and competitive markets. And value-based health care is a shrewdly selected and disingenuously applied misnomer. Value-based pricing is not a health-care innovation. Value-based pricing is why a plastic cup filled with tepid beer costs $8 at the ballpark, why a pack of gum costs $2.50 at the airport and why an Under Armour pair of socks costs $15. Value-based pricing is based on manipulating customer perceptions and emotions, lack of sophistication, imposed shortages and limitations. Finally, value-based prices are always higher than the alternative cost-based prices, and profitability can be improved in spite of lower sales volumes.

Health care pricing is currently a smoldering mixture of ill-conceived cost-based pricing with twisted value-based pricing components. For simplicity purposes, let’s examine the pricing of physician services. As for all health care, the pricing of physician services is driven by Medicare. The methodology is neither cost-based nor value-based and simultaneously it is both. How so? Medicare fees are based on relative value units, which are basically coefficients for calculating the cost of providing various services in various practices, of various types and specialties. The price, which is also the cost since it includes physician take home compensation, is calculated by plugging in a dollar value, called conversion factor. The conversion factor, which is supposed to represent costs, is not in any way related to actual production costs, but instead it is calculated so the total cost of physician services will not exceed the Medicare budget for these services. Buried in this complex pricing exercise is a value-based component. A committee of physicians gets to decide the requisite amount of physician effort, skills and education, for each service. Whereas in other markets the value decision hinges on buyer perceptions, in health care it is masquerading as cost.

The commercial insurance market adds a more familiar layer of complexity to the already convoluted Medicare fee schedule baseline. Unlike Medicare fees, which are nonnegotiable, private payers will engage in value-based negotiations with larger physician groups and health systems that employ them. Monopolistic health systems in a given geographical area can pretty much charge whatever the market can bear, just like the beer vendor at your favorite ballpark does, and brand name institutions get to flex their medical market muscles no differently than Under Armour does for socks. This is value-based pricing at its best. Small practices have of course no negotiation power in the insurer market, but as shortages of physician time and availability begin to emerge, a direct to consumer concierge market is being created, providing a new venue for independent physicians, primary care in particular, to move to a more profitable value-based pricing model.

Unsurprisingly this entire scheme is not working very well for any of the parties involved, except private insurers who thrive on complexity and the associated waste of resources. Upon what must have been a very careful examination of the payment system, Medicare concluded that it does not wish to pay physicians for services that fail to lower Medicare expenditures, and Medicare named this new payment strategy value-based health care, not because it has anything in common with value-based pricing, but because it sounds good. Another frequently used term in health care is value-based purchasing, which is attempting to inject the notion of quality as the limiting factor for cost containment. However, since Medicare is de facto setting the prices for its purchases, there is really no material difference between these two terms.

We need to be very clear here that value-based health care is not the same as quality-based health care. The latter means that physicians provide the best care they know how for their patients, while the former means that physicians provide good health care for the buck. To illustrate this innovative way of thinking, let’s look at the newest carrots and sticks initiative, scheduled to take effect for very large medical groups (over 100 physicians) in 2015. Below is a table that summarizes the incentives and penalties that will be applied through the new Medicare Value-based Payment Modifier.

There are several things to note here. First, if your patients receive excellent care and have excellent outcomes, you will receive no perks if that excellence involves expensive specialty and inpatient services, whether those are the accepted standard of care or not. You would actually be better off financially if you took it down a notch and provided mediocre care on the cheap. The second thing to notice is that you will not get penalized for providing horrendously subpar care, if you do that without wasting Medicare’s money.

Another intriguing aspect of this new program is that you have no idea how big the incentives, if any, are going to be. The upside numbers in the table are not percentages. They are multipliers for the x factor. The x factor is calculated by first figuring out the total amount of penalties, and that amount is then divided among those who are due incentives. If there are few penalties, there will be meager incentives. Lastly, those asterisks next to the upside numbers, indicate that additional incentives (one more x factor) are available to those who care for Medicare patients with a risk score in the top 25% of all risk scores.

As with everything Medicare does, this too is a zero sum game. For there to be winners, there must be losers. One is compelled to wonder how pitting physician groups against one another advances collaboration, dissemination of best practices, or sharing of information, and how it benefits patients. Leaving philosophical questions aside, the optimal strategy for obtaining incentives seems to be transition to a Medicare Advantage type of thinking: get and keep the healthiest possible patients, and make sure you regularly code every remotely plausible disease in their chart. Stay away from those dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, the very frail, the lonely, the infirm, or the very old, and don’t be tempted to see a random person who is in a pinch, because there is always the chance that he or she will be attributed to your panel following some hospitalization or other misfortune.

The Value-based Payment Modifier is for beginners. It is just the training wheels for the full-fledged risk assumption that Medicare is seeking from physicians and health care delivery systems in general. The grand idea is not much different than providing an aggregated and risk adjusted defined contribution for a group of assigned members, and having the health care delivery system absorb budget overruns, or keep the change if they come in under budget. There is great value in such a system for Medicare and commercial payers certain to follow in its footsteps, and perhaps this is why they decided to call it value-based. Ironically, the equally savvy health care systems are fighting back precisely by building the capacity to create a true value-based pricing model for their services through consolidation, monopolies, corralled customers, artificial shortages, confusing marketing, and diminished physicians.

It is difficult to lay blame at the feet of health systems for these seemingly predatory practices, because transition to a perpetual volume-reducing health care system is by definition unsustainable. The infrastructure and resources needed to satisfy all the strategizing, optimizing, counting and measuring activities required for value-based health care, whether the modest payment modifier or the grown up accountable care organization (ACO), are fixed costs added to health system expenses year after year. However, the incentives or shared-savings are temporary at best, because at some point volumes cannot be reduced further without actually killing people. Either way, in the near future, and for already frugal systems, in the present, all incentives will dry up leaving only massive outlays for avoiding penalties coupled with increased risk for malpractice suits.

And as these titans are clashing high above our little heads, two outcomes are certain: Individual physicians will be paid less and individual patients will be paying more for fewer services. This is how we move from volume to value. Less volume for us, more value for them.

Margalit Gur-Arie is founder, BizMed. She blogs at On Healthcare Technology.

iWant

'Nuff said.

I never understood the loss of empathy during medical training. Until now.

Another incredibly powerful post published on KevinMD.com, this from an anonymous medical student. Read it and weep. I did.

It was 4:30 a.m., and I was on the side of the road, drenched in sweat and tears. I had finally slowed my breathing to normal. I was going to be late for rounds. No time to obsess over possible questions. No time to memorize lab values, or practice regurgitating them.

I thought of home. My family and friend, who I hadn’t seen in months. I cringed when I estimated how long it had been since I called them. And the place itself. The dry, clean heat of the desert. The pump jacks that dotted the landscape. The men with their muddy work boots and weathered skin. The brave, unconventional beauty, the humility of the region. And my heart ached to be there, to go back to a time where I was bright and hopeful. I think that’s where most of my sadness came from. Grieving the loss of her, the girl who wanted to do something that mattered.


I attended my dream school. I remember the day that I received my acceptance letter as one of the happiest in my life. I was going to learn from some of the smartest doctors in the world. I felt blessed. As a young man, my grandfather had crossed the border to pick cotton. His third grade education and shaky English would keep him working manual labor jobs for his entire life. My father was the first to graduate from high school. He, like most men back home, worked in the oilfields. And I was going to medical school. My family couldn’t help me fill out the applications or pay for the MCAT (I worked at a coffee shop to cover that). But they were my biggest fans, my cheerleading squad.

My decision to choose medicine was emotionally motivated. My mother became very sick during my junior year. She spent months in hospitals, on respirators and feeding tubes. I watched my mom suffering, and I hated that I didn’t understand what was going on, that I couldn’t help. Soon after she came home, I announced I was going to medical school. I had never been so sure.

We experienced intense stress and pressure to perform, to produce results. Early on, I stopped attending lectures, and watched from home. I could speed up the recording and learn twice as fast, I reasoned. Alone in the small apartment that my loans afforded me once I paid the hefty tuition bill, I worked diligently to produce what were considered mediocre grades at my institution. It is difficult to explain the isolation, the emptiness of this time. Those are two years I’ll never get back. Two years of youth and good health spent in an apartment.

I would call my friends and family often in the beginning, sobbing and anxious. But how could they understand? To them, to the outside, a doctor’s life seemed very glamorous indeed. After a while, I stopped calling.

The only patient contact I received were not real patients. They were actors. Once or twice a semester, we would conduct earnest interviews with these pretend patients. We would be timed, filmed, and graded. Even our interactions with other human beings were carefully scripted and judged. If my university believed in one thing, it was that there was no human enterprise on Earth that could not be held to a rubric. They had yet to fail in their quest to quantify, to measure all of the qualities of an ideal doctor.

Then the grand finale: step 1, or as I like to call it: “The Most Important Test On The Planet: If You Screw Up You Will Never Get The Residency That You Have Dreamed About Since You Were Three Years Old.” Weeks of cramming material into my head. I drank coffee. I studied. Period. I was motivated by the promise of the clinical years. I was finally going to be able to interact with humans again. I prayed that the motivation, the drive I had lost somewhere along the way would return.

My happiest times in school were early in the morning, before the residents and the attendings were around to expose the holes in my knowledge, or reprimand me for forgetting to test cranial nerve IX, or scold me for my presentation being too long (or too short, depending on the person.) It was listening to my patients as they told me about their children. Their patience as I clumsily stumbled through the interview. The way their face relaxed as I told them that I would bring up their concerns to the doctor. Holding their hands and telling them it was going to be alright. Laughing, connecting, loving. Ironically, the shortest parts of my day. No time for that sort of thing with notes to write, tests to study for, articles to look up.

I attempted to explain the situation to the school psychologists. I tried to convey the sense of loss, the unmet expectations, the dying of a dream. I was told I was experiencing severe depression and anxiety, feelings that were internally generated. No possible flaw in the system, they rationalized. After all, there were rubrics. I was assured it would take months to treat me. Best to get on with it, numb up in time for the next rotation. Instead, I took a leave of absence.

I have been silent for too long. I have asked, “What’s wrong with me?” when I should have been asking, “What’s wrong with this?” I am compassionate and hardworking, yet I have been daily made to feel inadequate. I have been isolated from the people and the pursuits I love. I have given up everything, paid thousands of dollars, thousands of hours. I have repeated to myself over and over, “there is only medical school.” I almost believed it.

I never understood the trend of loss of empathy during medical training. Until now. See, when you’re in so much pain that if you thought of your life past this moment, this singular point in time, you would implode, pain seems as natural as breathing. Pain is part of life. Pain is nothing. You can’t stop to nurse your own wounds, you can’t talk about how much you hurt. So how could you possibly have enough room in your broken heart to take on someone else’s pain? So you don’t. You cover your bases and survive. You become that machine that you swore you’d never become. Because it hurts too much to feel, and it’s so much easier to float than swim.

I fantasize daily about leaving medicine for the endless sky back home. I miss the person that I was so very much. But I’m still here. And I hold onto my faded dreams in my little hands.

Why?

I remember that hospital room that smelled of isopropyl alcohol and sickness. I remember changing the sheets my mom soiled because the nursing staff was short in our small hospital. I remember the cold, detached doctors that came for ten minutes once a day. I remember how they spoke in riddles, how they seemed so far away. I remember.

I promise I won’t forget. I’ll never forget.

Out Of Site Visits

Because one of our sites has decided to replace some generations-old equipment, I had the joy of going on two site visits over the past couple of weeks. Both were sponsored by BIG NAMES, and both fell rather short. Which prompts me to examine the entire concept of the site visit.

In brief, the site needs two quite different pieces of equipment, both sold by the BIG VENDORS in question. Both teams got only half of it right, one showing us the first, and one showing us the second. Both seemed to be a little oblivious to the fact that we needed one of each. My recommendation at this point is to buy one machine from one vendor and the other from the other. I doubt that will happen.

So what went wrong? I'm not totally sure, but I think it probably comes down to someone not listening. I think we made our needs pretty clear, but...

Site visits can be fun, at least they were in the old days. I've been on what might have been one of the more expensive equipment junkets in the history of imaging. We had two Elscint CT's at the time, and the company wanted us to consider their MRI's. Our trip started at Elscint HQ in Haifa, Israel, and then took us to Kiel, Germany to see the only prototypes in existence of the machines we sought. The machines were actually quite impressive. Elscint had created one of the first high-field scanners, a 2T device, as well as a dual-gradient machine. There was just one little catch. The week before we left for the trip, Elscint was SOLD! GE purchased the nuclear medicine and MRI divisions, and Picker (later Philips) snagged the CT business. So GE ate the bill for me and my partner to look at scanners that were never manufactured! We did have a good time, though.

What is the point of a site visit? To see the machine? Here's a little secret: Most every scanner is a big box with a hole in it. Some have prettier cowling than others, some have a water-chiller in the corner, which looks rather like a fridge. Some have really nice LCD displays over the gantry. Whoopie. More importantly, one gets the chance to talk to the users, technologists, physicians, whomever. Usually, the salesmen have the tact to disappear for a moment so the bad stuff can be discussed as well as the good. (Bad stuff does come out..on our Fuji PACS site visit years ago, the PACS admin said, "Fuji support isn't so good and we have to maintain the system ourselves." Which was the end of Fuji.)

Of course, the most important part is the obligatory meal at vendor expense. But the days of picking the most expensive wine on the list are gone, and frankly I never felt terribly comfortable spending the vendors' money on frivolity anyway. Not that a fancy meal or trip can or should influence my choice, but the optics are what they are.

Ultimately, I think the days of the site-visit are numbered.

My friend Mike Cannavo, once again the One and Only PACSMan, ghost-wrote this paragraph for my RSNA Christmas Carol fantasy:

“Isn’t it obvious?” (the PACSMan) asked. “Here’s the deal. No one knows where healthcare is going, so we’re all going to start enjoying Thanksgiving again for the first time in 75 years. Instead of freezing our asses off, we’ll do an interactive virtual conference with scheduled demos and everything. No muss, no fuss, and no ‘free’ meals. As a bonus, system prices will drop 30% because vendors won’t have to pay for RSNA. It’s sheer brilliance, I tell ya!"

Mike was referring to the vendor extravaganza at RSNA, but I think this applies to site-visits as well. There is simply no need to haul people across the countryside (or country, for that matter) to see the scanner. They all look pretty much the same, and decisions are not made on the basis of their appearance. (Bore size and other specs are important, but that's all in the specs.)

Conversations with the important people can be choreographed by phone with little difficulty. And images, the most important piece of my puzzle, can be sent, hopefully in a form that will easily load on the customers' PACS. (Yes, that can be a problem.)

Hey, I like a paid day off as much as anyone else, but I'm getting too old to drag my carcass around the neighborhood and indeed the country to spend 5 minutes in the presence of the Holey Box and its keepers . Let's save a few thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars and try it my way.

I've probably just made myself a target for those who like getting wined and dined and taken to various exotic places like we just were, but time change, boys. Go spend the time with your family instead. That goes for the vendors, too.

"Speaking Truth To Crap"

Dalai's note: This piece is reprinted from today's American Thinker. It is one of the most eloquent, heartfelt, and most importantly, ACCURATE renditions of the Mideast situation today. It is a long essay, but well worth your time. Know the history. Know the TRUTH.

Speaking Truth to Crap

By Dan Gordon

I've been home from participating in Operation Protective Edge for about a week. I am in uniform no more, though I still wear my dog tags in solidarity with my brothers in arms, who, like all citizens of Israel, await the outcome of cease-fire talks in Cairo. Because we never wanted this war. It was forced upon us by Hamas. The current cease-fire is set to expire Monday at Midnight Israel time. Hamas has repeatedly rejected and/or violated each past cease-fire, so no one knows what will happen with this one.

I admit to being a bit cranky.

I don't think it's PTSD, though I've been to too many funerals, had a few too many close calls with rockets and mortars, had people with whom I'd celebrated the night before be killed the next day, seen chunks of the skull of a sixteen year old blown off by shrapnel from a mortar round I successfully dodged, only through luck and the grace of a loving G-d, who, I choose to believe, still has some use for me on the planet.

The song "Fire and Rain" is playing on the local oldies station and I think to myself, " Oh James, you Sweet Hippie Child, you haven't seen anything..."

You haven't been in a shelter during a rocket attack trying to comfort a little girl with nothing but the BS of an adult trying to comfort a child in a rocket attack, who knows better. You haven't seen people race for cover knowing they have only seven seconds before risking being blown apart. You haven't met people who've had to lock themselves in a so called safe room, while only a few hundred meters away a dozen terrorists, armed with anti tank missiles that could incinerate their home, machine guns, grenades, thousands of rounds of ammunition and hand cuffs, with which to take them prisoner and drag them through terrorist tunnels, into underground cells, are on the prowl, and they, this sweet family in a locked room, know that they are their targets. They will live or die in the next hour, depending upon the skill and bravery of eighteen and nineteen year old boys and girls, who are willing to lay down their lives, not to promulgate any occupation, nor subjugate another people, but to protect their homes and families, and on this particular day, some of those kids will do just that. They will lay down their lives to protect this family and others like them. The terrorists' secret "Divine Victory Plan" to kill, maim and take hostage, Israeli men women and children will be foiled and there will be new funerals of nineteen year olds who've given their lives to save the lives of that family huddled together behind a locked door in their home. And you think you've seen Fire and Rain, James?

Since I'm back I've become appalled by the lack of journalistic integrity I've seen in some coverage, and the sheer ignorance in the coverage of others.

I like listening to NPR on weekends. They have a comedy game show called "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me." I'm driving from a friend's house and searching for it on the radio and an NPR news cast comes on. It's about Gaza, so reflexively, like all Israelis, I turn the sound up. Are we at war? Are rockets falling again? The reporter comes on. She has well modulated, upper crust British Public School pronunciation, as she describes the plight of Palestinian Fisherman in Gaza who now have a five hundred meter limit placed on their fishing activities by the Israeli Navy in the wake of the recent war. She describes it as if it is some cold hearted, at the very least, collective punishment of innocent Gazan Fisherman.

I mean how cruel can these Zionist oppressors of the downtrodden Gazan fishermen be?

We're talking fishermen here!

Peter was a Fisherman. Jesus preached on the shores of the Sea of Galilee...to Fishermen! Just like these poor Palestinian Fishermen whom the Israelis cruelly limit to fishing only five hundred meters from shore!

Nazis!

I can almost see a new site to match "Jesus at the Checkpoint," which tries to say if Jesus of Nazereth were alive today he would be a poor Palestinian, harassed by Roman-like, Jewish, Nazi soldiers at checkpoints in the West Bank. Jesus would be, were he alive today, separated from his neighbors by "The Apartheid Wall"!

Never mind that the checkpoints were a response to, and preventative measure against, the suicide bombers who claimed a thousand Israeli lives, who blew up women and children in pizza parlors and Passover Seders.

As for the so-called " Apartheid Wall," it is a security fence, only three percent of which is a thirty foot high wall. And why is there even three percent which is a thirty foot high wall? Because for years Palestinian terrorists from Kalkiliya and Tul Karem would shoot at cars on the Trans-Israel highway and kill Israelis. And by the way, since the barrier has been there, it's stopped almost a hundred percent of the suicide attacks. Period.

It's not Apartheid you bozo! It's self-preservation!

Twenty percent of Israel's population are Arabs, many of whom define themselves as Palestinian. They sit on our Supreme Court, which recently sent a former Israeli president and a former Israeli Prime Minister to Jail. They study and teach in our universities, serve in our military, are doctors and nurses in our hospitals, and enjoy the protection of the least corrupt, most liberal judiciary in the entire Middle East. Indeed no Arab country affords them the rights they have as citizens of Israel. Does that sound like Apartheid to you? I'll tell you what sounds like Apartheid. It is the fact that virtually every Palestinian leader has said that not one Jew will remain in a Palestinian state once it is created. In other words Judenrein. Jew-Free. Hitler's wet dream

But I digress.

Pardon the rant. I said I was cranky. Back to the poor Gazan fishermen who can't fish beyond a five hundred meter limit imposed by the Israeli Navy during the current war. What this Brit twit of an Oxbridge reporter fails to mention is that Hamas terrorists attempted to stage a water-borne terrorist attack on Zikkim beach near the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Happily, they were engaged and killed by some more 19-year-old Israeli kids willing to lay down their lives to protect the Israeli civilian farmers at Kibbutz Zikkim, where the terrorists were headed. That's why there's a five hundred meter restriction! Because Hamas terrorists, posing as poor Gazan fisherman, indeed, tried to carry out a terrorist attack against our civilians. Gazan fisherman are paying the price for Hamas terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. But the Oxbridge modulated tones never mention that. They just sadly intone her name, and solemnly bear witness to yet another Israeli act of tyranny.

Gimme a break!

Do your homework you twit. Keep your prejudice, if you like, in the melodrama you wrote in your head before you ever even got there, but provide at least a little bit of context. Whattaya say?

All of which brings me to Jon Voight.

Mr. Voight recently penned an open letter to Javier Bardem and his equally talented wife, Penelope Cruz, for signing an open letter condemning Israel as a war criminal without once mentioning the name, let alone the deeds of Hamas. Mr. Voight took them to task and recounted Israel's history in a workman-like fashion, hoping to educate them, and his readers, regarding the facts leading up to the current conflict.

Mr. Voight has thus, recently been taken to task himself, by a member of Academia who has chosen to identify with the downtrodden, put-upon, maligned and much misunderstood freedom fighters of Hamas.

He has done so by taking his stand against the capitalist, pig, oppressors of the Palestinian masses, namely the dreaded Zionists.

He flaunts his academic credentials to poor Mr. Voight, a mere actor, and present the true facts and myths surrounding Israel, even going so far as to cite like-minded Jewish and Israeli academics, in order to enlighten the aforementioned, and hopelessly naive Mr. Voight. He, after all, has written and edited books specializing on (his grammar, not mine) the history and contemporary realities of Israel, Zionism and Palestine. The conclusion which the professor has drawn is that the United States and Israel are to blame "for the suffering Israel has inflicted on the Palestinian people." And to ice that academic cake, and bolster his argument to irrefutable heights, which, no mere actor could ever hope to scale, he quotes that leading expert on all things Middle Eastern, none other than John Leibowitz!

Oh...what's the matter ? You never heard of John Leibowitz?

That's because this particular proud Jewish comic, unlike guys named Seinfeld, Sandler, and Stiller, felt he couldn't make it merely on his talent. I mean, who ever heard of a Jewish Comedian? So he Anglicized himself into becoming a homey of the Oxbridge Patron Saint of Palestinian Fisherman, and thus, was born again as, Jon Stewart.

I like Jon Stewart.

I think Jon Stewart's a funny guy.

I think he's so funny, in fact, he could even have made it even if his name was Leibowitz.

But I'd no more depend on his analysis of the current conflict in the Middle East, than I would consult with Dr. Pepper about a medical condition. Dr. Pepper's a heck of a soft drink. But by Doctors, he's no doctor.

So this is not an open letter to this bozo of new left chic Academia. But it is a refutation of the same talking points raised by his fellow travelers seeking to delegitimize Israel's very right to exist as the sovereign nation state of the Jewish people. First of all, what you have to understand is, the very notion of a sovereign Jewish state, within any borders, is anathema to this crowd. They live in an enlightened, post-nationalistic mindset, where the only people in the Middle East entitled to be nationalists, in fact, are those who wish to establish, not a nation, but a Caliphate.

Regarding the birth of Israel in 1948, Mr. Voight rightly cites it having come about as a result of Israel's acceptance of the 1947 UN plan to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Arab League and the Palestinians, represented by their revered leader Haj Amin Al Husseini, rejected the partition plan and the establishment of any Jewish State within any borders, and as Mr. Voight pointed out, Israel was subsequently "attacked by five surrounding Arab countries committed to driving them into the sea,"

The professor counters that poor Mr. Voight has been taken in by a Zionist myth. "This is a distortion of the actual history, which saw Zionism arrive on the soil of a Palestine that was already in the midst of its own modernization." The Zionists, he states, deployed "the conquest of labor" and then "the conquest of the land" to increasingly powerful effect once the British conquered Palestine in 1917"

I have heard this particular talking point from various radical left professors who have almost inexplicably cast their lot with misogynistic, gay hating, democracy hating, female genital mutilating, child bride abusing, murderous thug terrorists! I am a child of the left. I attended my first civil rights march at the age of ten. My first presidential campaign was for Jack Kennedy and my second was for Bobby. You can still find my blog supporting Barack Obama's first election on the Huffington Post. To have people who proclaim that they are for the universal rights of man, for equality of the sexes, for peace and justice, side with Hamas terrorists and claim their superiority over a Western democracy like Israel, makes me want to puke at the very perversity of the notion.

As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

So what exactly was this "soil of a Palestine…already in the midst of its own modernization" when Zionisim arrived? Well let's quote someone who was there, on that very soil a mere fifteen years before Zionism arrived. Mark Twain toured the Holy Land in 1867. Zionism arrived in 1882. What was the soil that Twain, no slouch of a social observer he, saw and described in his book, Innocents Abroad?

In describing the Valley of Jezreel, he states, "There is not a solitary village throughout it's whole extent -- not thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles, hereabouts, and not see ten human beings."

I mention the Valley of Jezreel in particular, because that's where I was partially raised, went to high school, from whence I went into the army, where I was married, where I taught high school and farmed and wrote and where my first born son, of blessed memory, was born. I know the Valley of Jezreel as well as I know any place on earth. It is the breadbasket of Israel, home to some of the most successful and stunning agriculture on earth. It is alive and bustling with farming villages, schools, colleges, high tech industry, and agriculture R&D that is the envy of the world. It abounds in forests, each tree of which was bought and paid for by Jews around the world, as was the land itself, which was stolen from not one Palestinian, because it was worthless and desolate and sold at inflated prices to the Jews who were so insane they paid handsomely for barren soil, which they turned into paradise through..."the conquest of Labor"!

There was a time when leftists actually praised labor! But this was Jewish labor. Jews working with their hands in backbreaking labor and I am old enough to have actually known that founding generation, and their love of that land which was as bare and desolate as when Twain first visited. They made it bloom through "the conquest of labor." Unlike these pious Academic poseurs, they engaged in backbreaking work to plant forests and create thriving agricultural villages. They were idealistic young students who displaced no one in their "conquest of the land," which any enlightened progressive today should realize was carried out by the oldest and most effective ecological society in the world, The Jewish National Fund, which saw to it that Israel was the only nation on earth to enter the twenty-first century with more trees than it had in the century before. And you creeps dare to distort that into some kind of crime!

Here's is Twain's description of the Galilee before the arrival of Zionism: "These un peopled deserts, these rusty mounds of bareness, that never, never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines...; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under six funereal palms...A desolation here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action." That was the Galilee then. Visit it today and be amazed at "the pomp of life and action" all of which was brought in through the conquest of labor of the Zionist Jews literally reclaiming the land from the desert it had become.

Regarding Israel's acceptance of the 1947 UN partition plan and the Arab/ Palestinian rejection of same, the professor states, "The Zionist leadership ‘accepted’ the terms of the 1947 Partition Plan. In reality, they had little intention of actually fulfilling them, and over the next year, through inter communal conflict and then all out war, three quarters of a million Palestinians were permanently forced from their homes,"

Again the intellectual dishonesty by a supposed academic is simply staggering.

Here are the facts:

There never was a state of Palestine. Never. Not once in history. Prior to WW I, what is called Palestine, which comprised Israel of today, Gaza, Judea and Samaria and all of Jordan, comprised a sleepy backwater province of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans sided with the Germans, In WW I, and for those who don't remember, they lost the war. The League of Nations, forerunner of the UN, broke up the old Ottoman empire and at the San Remo Conference of 1921, passed a resolution "In favor of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people…." The resolution went on to state. "Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country..." the resolution went on to appoint Britain to have a mandate over Palestine, which "shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.... The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control and Government of any foreign power."

That last point is particularly important because Britain, in contravention of its duties as a mandatory power, lopped off the bulk of the territory and created out of whole cloth, with 70% of what was to have been the Jewish National home, a Palestinian Arab country, and called it Transjordan, which today is known simply as Jordan. But under international law it was to have been part of "The Jewish National Home"!

In 1936, following Arab massacres of ancient Jewish communities in Hebron and Safed, the British appointed the Peel Commission, which offered to partition the 30% of remaining land into two states; one Jewish and one Arab. Two thirds of the state would have gone to the Palestinian Arabs and one third to the Jews. The Palestinian Jews accepted the plan and the Arabs, who called themselves Arabs, and not Palestinians, again led by Haj Amin Al Husseini, rejected it. The Jews accepted this tiny enclave for one reason. It was 1937 and they knew what was about to happen to the Jews of Germany and Europe. When Hitler wanted to rid Europe of its Jews, not one country in the world would take them in and they literally went up in the smoke and ash of the crematoria of Hitler's death camps. Had Israel been born, even in it's Lilliputian form in 1937, six million Jews and all their descendants would have been alive today.

But, say the esteemed academic supporters and enablers of Hamas and their ilk, that just proves their point. The Palestinians had no part in the Holocaust, and yet they were made to pay the price by accepting into their midst the European survivors of European mass murder, that had nothing to do with them.

Really? Really?

Here are the facts, yet again, troublesome as I know they are.

When Britain went to war against Nazi Germany, the Jews of Palestine rushed to enlist in the British Army and eventually formed the Jewish Brigade which, together with its predecessor Jewish Palestinian units, fought valiantly in North Africa and in Europe, and played their part in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

And where was Haj Amin Al Husseini, the revered leader, indeed founder, (and uncle of Yasser Arafat) of the Palestinian Arab National Movement?

He was Hitler's poodle in Berlin.

So don't peddle this revisionist crap that the Palestinians had no part in the extermination of European Jewry and Nazi war crimes, because their leader Haj Amin Al Husseini sure as hell did!

He met with Mussolini and Himmler and Eichman and Hitler himself.

He joined the Nazi war effort by helping recruit Muslim units under German SS command that were responsible for mass murders in Croatia and Hungary.

Indeed Yugoslavia sought to have Haj Amin Al Husseini indicted for war crimes for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslims, who participated in mass murders of Jews and others in Central Europe. In 1944, on Radio Berlin, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the father of the Palestinian National movement said, "Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them! This pleases God, history and religion!"

He issued a statement saying, “Those lands suffering under the British and Bolshevik yoke impatiently await the moment when the Axis powers will emerge victorious. We must dedicate ourselves to unceasing struggle against Britain, that dungeon of peoples."

That's what the leader of the Palestinian Arabs was doing when my foster father and the other members of His Majesty's Jewish Brigade were fighting and defeating the Nazis in Europe.

As to the 1948 War of Liberation, far from being invaded by five surrounding Arab countries determined to make the Mediterranean red with the blood of the Jews, the professor claims that the Arab forces were minimal and badly trained and equipped, and were sent to prevent themselves from looking like collaborators, and to prevent their rival, Haj Amin Al Husseini, "from establishing a state".

Wait a second! Did this Bozo just say the Arab armies invaded the nascent state of Israel to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state?

You bet. That's what he said. The Arabs, not the Israelis, prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Egypt conquered Gaza and annexed it, without giving its inhabitants benefit of Egyptian citizenship.

Jordan annexed the West Bank and all the Palestinians there became Jordanian citizens. And by the way, no one at the time suggested ever turning those lands into a Palestinian state. At those times when they referred to occupied territory, they were talking about, and Hamas still talks about, Tel Aviv!

As to how badly trained and equipped the poor five invading Arab armies were...no less an expert than General George Marshall, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during WWII and President Truman's most trusted advisor, said that if the Jews declared independence they would be wiped out within two weeks. And he was right to think so. The "poorly equipped" Egyptians had a 10,000 man armored column less than an hour and a half drive from Tel Aviv. There was not one Israeli soldier between them and Israel's largest city. On the next morning they would drive into Tel Aviv and the two thousand year old dream of a Jewish state would be over. And what did those colonialist, imperialist, pig, Zionists have, with which to fight that 10,000 man armored column?

They had four Czech-built ME 109 fighter planes which had been smuggled into Israel in pieces, re assembled in hangars, had never been test flown, had never had their weapons test fired, possessed neither avionics nor radios so the pilots had to communicate with each other with hand signals, and for aeronautical charts had Palestine Auto Club road maps and boy scout compasses glued to the dashboards.

I know because I am privileged to know the man who led the attack of those four ME109s. He refers to me as his younger brother and it is one of the greatest honors of my life to be counted as his friend. His name is Lou Lenart. He and his three other pilots were told that the fate of the Jewish state rested on their shoulders. They were to take off and stop that armored column. If they failed, Israel was dead. Lou pulled out onto the tarmac, looked behind him at the three other planes and saw the entire Israeli Air Force.

But they did it.

They stopped the Egyptian column dead in its tracks and bought Israel the time it needed to survive.

Of the four pilots, they suffered fifty percent casualties on their first mission.

In Israel's war of Liberation in 1948 it lost one percent of its population killed. That would be the equivalent of America losing three million killed in one year. America has lost a little over one percent of that number in ten years of combat and they say America is “war weary.” What do you think Israel was?

Finally, these mouthpieces for terrorist thugs, wrapping themselves in the robes of Academia, claim that it was Israel that started this current war, and not Hamas.

But that's quite simply a lie.

And we know it's a lie because Hamas did not start digging those thirty two terrorist attack tunnels when Israel started it's aerial campaign against them. Those tunnels were an offensive weapon which was to have handed Hamas their "shock and awe," their 911 moment that would have brought Israel to its knees. They began digging those tunnels five years ago with the cement and steel they stole from their own people, with the cement and steel that was meant to rebuild Gaza, to build schools and hospitals and prenatal clinics. And instead they used it to build terrorist attack tunnels under Israel's internationally recognized 1967 border, aimed exclusively against Israeli civilians, whom they would have murdered, maimed and taken hostage by the dozens. This was their offense, planned and executed at the time of their choosing. But following their doctrine of carrying out terrorist attacks and then claiming the mantle of victimhood, with so called academics as their mouth pieces and enablers, they had to make it look like it was a response to Israeli aggression. So they publicly ordered the kidnap murder of three Israeli schoolboys on their way home from school.

And Israel didn't fire a shot into Gaza. They just engaged in a campaign to round up Hamas terrorists in Judea and Samaria, where the boys had been kidnapped and killed.

Then Hamas started firing rockets at Israel and Israel said repeatedly, “Calm will be answered with Calm."

They must have thought to themselves, " What's a guy got to do to start a war with these Jews?"

Then they upped their rocket attacks to a hundred a day and Israel still said "calm will be answered with calm" while they began their aerial campaign.

Finally a ceasefire was to have taken affect.

Israel accepted it.

Hamas rejected it by launching a major rocket barrage, and then the first of six terrorist tunnel attacks, and that's when Israel had no choice but to respond with a ground invasion to take out what was indeed an existential threat.

Of the 1800 Palestinians killed in this conflict, 1600 of them would be alive today if Hamas had only accepted the cease-fire Israel accepted immediately and unconditionally.

But as I said, they weren't interested in a cease-fire.

This was their war and they thought they could win it.

And don't you buy the crap so-called academics are peddling, that Hamas was the duly democratically elected government of Gaza. Hamas took power, not in an election, but in a bloody coup, machine gunning their fellow Palestinians, blindfolding, binding and throwing them off of multi story buildings. They have terrorized their own people, not only Israel. Their people, indeed, live under the yoke of occupation, but not by Israel, by Hamas.

And as for the apologists and enablers of Hamas, who contribute to the misery of Palestinians and Israelis alike, while sitting in their club chairs in the faculty lounge, may I suggest that from now on they speak only through the orifice which Mr. Voight has so eloquently enlarged for them, since what they are peddling is pure, unadulterated crap.