Worth Waiting For

About 12 years ago I was to have given a sermon at my church.  In planning for it, I asked our rector how long a sermon should be.  He answered with this bit of wisdom: "It takes as long as it takes."  Of course, he didn't realize I was asking about what I needed to do next week, and was thinking I was commenting on the length of his sermon that week.  But the phrase stuck with me, and the next week, when he realized WHY I was asking, we had a good laugh over his non-answer.

It is now October 2014.  This time last year HL7 was hurriedly trying to put the final pieces together for C-CDA Release 2.0, so that we could get it out in time for regulation.  It's still not published yet, although it soon will be, and the reality is that we apparently didn't need it in such a hurry.  Recent discussions on HL7 FHIR and the CDA and C-CDA on FHIR projects indicate that the dates for these don't all line up for the DSTU FHIR Ballot schedule.  There's some discussion about whether or not we should delay it.

I for one am all for taking as long as it takes to do things right.  I'm a bit tired of rushing stuff out to ballot to meet deadlines that were made by people who don't necessarily understand real world healthcare provider upgrade and deployment schedules.  We have plenty of work to do, and the industry has gotten itself pretty convinced about the right way to go.  Now we just have to convince folks that it will be worth waiting for.

Thus ends my sermon for this day...

   Keith