I’m extremely biased in this opinion, but I love that ONC has a healthcare IT blog. I’m sure it still has to go through the government filter, but I love that the members of ONC have a place where they can put out comments and thoughts and receive feedback from the greater community.
One thing that’s beautiful about a blog is that the community of readers often provide as much value in the comments as the writer provides in the commentary. I think that’s a hard shift for many journalists to make since they’ve been so well trained that they are suppose to provide the font of information, cover all angles, research out the facts, etc.
Since I’m not a journalist, this hasn’t been hard for me at all. In fact, one of the main reasons I started this blog was for me to share the information that I had learned and I learned very quickly that when I was wrong that the good people reading my site would be happy to correct me. I’m not sure I’d call all of those corrections a fun experience, but once I put my pride behind me I’m always grateful to be smarter after than I was before.
I imagine that ONC has seen the same thing. They’ve probably heard some comments that were hard for them to hear. However, once they get over those hard things, I’m sure they were grateful to have access to some candid feedback. Argue what you may about the value of meaningful use, certified EHR, and
