“Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” This is not what Dr. Fauci said this week when he testified before Congress and refused to answer questions about the federal government’s COVID-19 decisions during the pandemic. It could have been what he said – given the tension in that hearing. But instead, this is a line made famous by the 1970s The Incredible Hulk television series, when Dr. David Banner (played by Bill Bixby) warns people that bad things will happen if he gets upset. I can relate to this type of anger this week. I am writing a blog post about it, because my anger is directed at our broken health care system. So, the One Thoughtful Paragraph is more like the One Angry Paragraph this week.
This week’s federal agency news did not make me angry:
- The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), HHS, and ONC are asking the private sector to shape clinical AI evaluations, according to STAT News. This benchmarking effort will reportedly include a one-month “sprint” to review evaluation proposals and a series of virtual workshops.
- HHS’ Chief Information Officer (CIO), Clark Minor, will reportedly step down from the position, according to Fedscoop. The HHS IT leadership webpage briefly identified David Hong, the principal deputy CIO, as acting CIO – then was changed back to list Minor after Fedscoop‘s report published.
- ONC released USCDI v7, which includes 31 new data elements addressing patient safety, care coordination, and clinical care. ONC will accept public comments for USCDI v8 until September 28, 2026.
“Avoiding stress isn’t the secret.” In one of the Avengers movies, the Hulk says this to explain his decision to work with sick people in a ghetto in India, despite the fact that this highly stressful location may set off his anger issues. This is what was going through my head as I tried and failed to lie prone on a table to get an image-directed steroid injection into my back for my newly discovered degenerative disc condition. After 26 days of severe radiating nerve pain (read: worse than giving birth to one of my kids without the benefit of drugs), I was unable to get the treatment I needed. The Avengers scene came to me because I am quite similar to the Hulk, just without the gamma-rays-made-me-green-and-angry excuse. Just like the Hulk, I throw myself into my work to avoid an underlying sense of anger at everything. Plucking me from my happy workaholism into the world of our broken health care system, where a well-regarded neurosurgeon asks for my MRI image on a CD, brought my inner Hulk out this week. While this was happening to me, CMS held a livestream event to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem (HTE) initiative (see here and here for recordings), where one of the policy projects is to “ditch the disk” like the one my neurosurgeon requested. Instead, CMS is suggesting that maybe this imaging data could be made available quickly and easily and without a CD. This fix would be much more satisfying than – say – my getting therapy for my anger management issues (which I know you’re all thinking about suggesting to me right now). But it is just like in the Avengers movie, when Tony Stark encourages the Hulk to get some therapy to address his anger and the Hulk admits: “I don’t have the temperament.”
