Thank you for posting your leadership tools. You call your tools ’simple’ because (I assume) they are easy to understand. And yet, as I see it, your tools are deeply profound. They drive you to find things you can do now that will have positive effects in the future.

Too often in business and government the tendency is to focus on the next quarter or what it will take to get elected the next term. Planning for the long term seems to get left behind.

As a citizen of the great state of Utah I have seen the results of your long-term view of leadership. Now, having read your “5,000 day vision with a 500 day plan” I understand better why Utah is doing so well. Thank you for your leadership!

Thank you for sharing your practical tools for planning for the long-term by focusing on today.

Michael

As you are winding down your term, tying up loose ends, I think you should see this.

HIPAA is a terrible fit in the dental profession. I performed a limited survey of 18 colleagues and put together a paper illustrating the absurdity of the Rule for dentists. Here is the abstract from the study, which is published on Dentist.com in its entirety. http://dentistcom.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/the-hipaa-rule-and-dentistry-a-survey-of-dentists-%e2%80%93-a-pilot-study/

Thank you for your time. Sincerely Darrell Pruitt DDS
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The HIPAA Rule and Dentistry: A Survey of Dentists — a pilot study

Abstract

A survey of 18 dentists was performed using the Internet as a platform. The volunteer dentists’ anonymity was guaranteed by the dentist conducting the survey, Darrell Pruitt, D.D.S. The dentists were presented with ten HIPAA compliancy requirements followed by a series of questions concerning the dentists’ compliancy as well as the importance of the requirements in dental practices.

The range of compliancy was found to be from 0% for the requirement of a written workstation policy to 88% for that of password security. The average was 49%, meaning that less than half of the requirements are being respected by the dentists in this sample.

Frustration with the tenets of the mandate, as well as open defiance is evident by the written responses. In addition, it appears that a dentist’s likelihood of satisfying a requirement is related to the dentist’s perceived importance of the requirement.

Even though this is a limited pilot study, there is convincing evidence that more thorough investigation concerning the cost and benefits of the requirements needs to be performed before enforcement of the HIPAA mandate is considered for the nation’s dental practices.