The English play write and purveyor of prophetic proverbs, John Heywood, once postulated that “a hard beginning maketh a good ending”. I fully anticipate that this blog will have a hard beginning and so thanks to Mr. Heywood, I'm as happy as a rat with a golden tooth!After attending the MMIS conference in San Diego in August, it occurred to me that someone should establish a forum that would allow for a free exchange of ideas about MITA and/or the Medicaid information systems environment in general. Yes, there are workgroups, and advisory groups, and the suits at CMS and consortiums of States – all of whom meet at various intervals to discuss specific aspects of MITA and all of whom make a significant contribution – but these environments often suffer from “group think-itis” (yes, that is a valid meeting diagnosis and no, there is not an ICD9 code for it!). Oftentimes the comments and observations in these forums are constrained through the pressure of attribution alone.
In other words, this blog will, if used, provide a space for people with an interest in MITA to post anonymous comments – both good and bad – as well as a place for folks who wish to be recognised to commiserate, exchange ideas and generally just connect.
The MITA Matters blog team (okay, its just me for now) will try very hard (okay, not really THAT hard) to provide thought-provoking posts that will help to facilitate the "conversation". If there is a topic that you would like to see raised for discussion, please include it in a comment to this post - click the "comment" button at the end of this post and a comment window will magically appear. This comment window also allows you to read what others have said - it provides the interactivity portion of the blog.
Suggestions for topics and also suggestions for links to add to the CMS MITA stuff can also be submitted via email at mitablog@comcast.net.
We'll give it a month or so and see how it goes....
-Mikey
