… and especially when it's nearly an advertisement disguised as a news story.
This week, CBS Sunday Morning ran a profile on EHR behemoth Epic and its founder, Judith Faulkner, that has created some ripples in the healthcare IT community.
Look, most of the snickering and eye-rolling is jealousy. After all, the show has a national audience, the interview was near-adulatory and Judith got to show off what admittedly is a cool campus. Who wouldn't ever want that kind of exposure for his or her business?
And the timing was incredibly fortuitous: There's little doubt that Epic will show the story repeatedly in its massive display area at the upcoming HIMSS20 global health conference and exhibition in Orlando.
It would be easy to pick apart Epic and its shortcomings. Practitioners continue to struggle with its electronic health record (EHR) services as well as those of its competitors. There is something bigger than a "cottage industry" dedicated to helping those people deal with their EHR systems.
Our main issue with the piece is that it undoubtedly was the first exposure that many people who don't work in a healthcare-related field will have with the topic. The oversimplified, "We're transforming your paper medical records into digital files" story wasn't true 10 years ago when these things first rolled out -- and it's still not true in a meaningful way.
What it does is extend the expectation/letdown/lowered-expectations cycle that has been playing out among practitioners and the healthcare IT community for more than a decade by spreading it to the general population.
But maybe – maybe – it makes explaining our jobs a little easier: "So, you saw that piece on 'CBS Sunday Morning' about the health IT company in Wisconsin where the offices are subway cars and gingerbread houses? Let's start there … ."
If you're at HiMSS20 in Orlando during March 9 - 13, stop by the interoperability showcase and let's talk about how we're working with our partners in the healthcare IT standards community toward true patient care without boundaries.