SHIN was hailed as the symbol of health care reform and the back bone of our health system(2). And this technological mind set has been responsible for today's dysfunctional health care system. SHIN has been responsible for the mismanagement of some $40-million(3), however nobody has to be blamed since our big brains share the same so called democratic philosophy that if money has been democratically allocated for SHIN then we are all democratically responsible for any related failure.

Our leaders follow the decrepit business philosophy that "an individual problem could be a problem; but a common problem is no problem." So, our health care leaders have been continuing to lie on their policy problems by shifting the blame and saying that the shortage of nurses is a world wide problem and that the shortage of doctors is a problem across Canada. And in the meantime, our health care leaders have been constructing a political, bureaucratic, academic and business environment whereby all policy decisions are democratically established, and where all these policies reward all the democratic stakeholders: politicians, bureaucrats, researchers and businesses with the exception of the most important people, the common people(4) (and doctors and health care workers). And this is why we have a dysfunctional health care system. In a more subtle way, we have a basic problem in health care because we apply the so called rules of the private market place for a supposed public health service, and the rules of the private market place are set by corrupted politicians, bureaucrats, researchers and their allied businesses(5).

Going back to SHIN, well, SHIN has no problem, it gets along with Saskatchewan Health and SAHO. And now that SHIN has failed in its principal mandate to be our Big Brother and set up the controversial computerized medical records for any resident in the province, we have bigger bureaucratic organizations coming to assist the failing SHIN and dilute our technological blunders across Canada. As I was saying 'a common problems is no problem', and we now have the so called bureaucratic HL7 Canada outfit presenting itself as "the forum for Canadian health information stakeholders ...HL7 Canada represents Canadian requirements and issues in the international forum with a strong, single voice(6)" And, if HL7 Canada is not enough to assemble all our technological blunders into a technological minestrone, we have another specialized bureaucratic outfit mixing up and enriching our technological minestrone, it is called the Western Health Information Collaborative(7) (WHIC).

The morale of this story is that a common problem is no problem, and SHIN is no problem, as our own government continues to break its own laws(8)! Do we have a problem Minister of Health Pat Atkinson?

References/endnotes

Relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign

1. Associate Minister of Health Judy Junor: defending the SHIN flop at the Legislature, by Mario deSantis, April 13, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000/desantis160/judyjunor.html

2. Web site of the Saskatchewan Health Information Network (SHIN) http://www.shin.sk.ca

3. Saskatchewan Health Information Network-SHIN: Ignoring its mandate and diverting money for the Y2K Nightmare, by Mario deSantis, November 3, 1999 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/desantis80/SHIN_Nov04-99.html

4. Polls show mistrust of governments' medicare spending.Widespread dissatisfaction: Health care workers, Canadians want accountability. By Mark Kennedy, December 14, 2000, Ottawa Citizen http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20001214/404863.html

5. A Partial Diagnosis of Health Care Corruption: The Quality Circle of the Big Brains Includes Our Renown Health Economists, by Mario deSantis, March 9, 2000 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2000/desantis135/DeclineHealth.html

6. What is HL7 Canada? http://www.cihi.ca/hl7/hl7.htm

7. Western Health Information Collaborative, http://www.whic.org/

8. Gov't, health districts fail accountability review: auditor. Minister admits problems exist in approving budgets, by Anne Kyle, December 15, 2000, The StarPhoenix, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan