Cannot Get Away From Medical Information Errors, Continued

In "This informaticist can't escape clinical IT issues even on personal business", I observed that I encountered HIT informational issues even in my own family matters, when least expecting them. I've had a few incidents since then, generally each time I've taken relatives to the hospital as a medical advocate.

It seems every time I step into a hospital as a medical advocate such issues arise, whether they be complaints from staff about IT, my mother being prescribed an IV antibiotic in the ED that an hour before I'd told the intake nurse she was severely allergic to, that fact being dutifully entered into the EHR - or as in the case below, outright errors regarding surgical procedures.

Either medical information errors follow me around, or they are more common than I realize, because I just spent a few days as a medical advocate for a very long and dear friend.

She had a suspicious thyroid nodule found at the time of exam for excision of a small breast carcinoma. She was set to have a thyroidectomy at a major NYC hospital with relatively advanced HIT capabilities and large endowments from very wealthy contributors, whose paintings hang in the lobbies (and where some high level informatics professionals are involved in clinical IT projects).

When I arrived the evening prior to surgery, my friend showed me her pre-op instructions. They were printed out in a neat and organized fashion, and she'd shown me the calcium supplements she'd purchased as the instructions advised.

"Calcium supplements?", I asked...

The computer form, properly labeled with her name and ID and the name of the nurse practitioner she'd seen for preop evaluation, was quite improperly entitled "Preoperative instructions to patients undergoing parathyroidectomy."

First thing I did in the morning was insist on seeing the surgeon in person. I wanted zero chance for error. Fortunately, the surgeon was familiar with her case and knew this was an error. Suppose, however, the surgeon was not so knowledgeable about the patient, or unavailable, or called away for some emergency and someone else filling in?

I do not know if the error was simple human error by the NP or someone prior who'd performed data entry, a wrong selection due to a mission hostile user interface in the setting of overwork, a computer error due to some cross-link between (to non biomedical personnel) two similar-sounding terms - parathyroid vs. thyroid - or some other cause.

Needless to say, if this error had resulted in an unnecessary and injurious parathyroidectomy and necessity for followup thyroidectomy on a postoperative area, and had been as a result of IT problems either totally or partially , it is likely the vendor would have been "held harmless" and the defect nondisclosed to other organizations.

(Anecdotally, on going to the bathroom, I also noted a group of residents on rounds energetically discussing what "template" was the correct one in which to enter patient data of some type. When I rounded years ago, I remember discussing medical issues...)

While I agree the likelihood of major IT contribution to this error was low, this was a reminder of just how problematic healthcare quality can be, even with advanced IT.

I think the solution is not to see IT as a panacea, and maintain adequate human involvement (with humans not overburdened feeding the bureaucratic machine) in safety issues.

-- SS