Law firms as enablers of HIT experiments? Familiar law firm now regular reader of Healthare Renewal

It continues to amaze me that unregulated, unvetted healthcare information technology of unproven benefit and proven harm continues to spread like wildfire. This occurs even when people are killed, such as the infant deaths I outlined at this post being defended by obstructionist law firms.

This phenomenon has enablers. Among those, which include HIT vendors, their marketing arm HIMSS, large consultant companies, HIT pundits, the government, etc., law firms seem to have become enablers of hospitals' experiments with unproven, unqualified, unregulated healthcare information technology - in part by defending the medical mistakes that result.

Lawyers defending blatant IT-related errors impede correction of the defects and impaired "HIT ecosystem" that causes the problems. After all, they can simply tell a hospital a case is not defensible (and, for example, advise them to settle). Accepting cases is entirely voluntary.

For example, take the law firm of MARSHALL,DENNEHEY,WARNER,COLEMAN defending the hospital that caused my mother's IT-related year-long suffering starting May 2010, and then death exactly one month ago on June 6, 2011. They have become a regular reader of Healthcare Renewal, and I can believe it's not to help the hospital improve its HIT.

It's not as if lawyers are not writing on these issues, such as Case Western School of Law's Sharona Hoffman in "E-Health Hazards: Provider Liability and Electronic Health Record Systems". That work is a comprehensive analysis of the liability risks associated with use of clinical IT.

The real-world result of health IT interfering in simple care processes. Law firms that defend HIT-caused medical errors are enablers in use of these experimental technologies.

Perhaps they should have advised their clients of the risks of health IT before my mother was maimed? Or did they not know of these risks, something any law firm advising healthcare clients in 2010-2011 knew, should have known, or should have made it their business to know?

Some tracking examples among a larger set:

Today:

Domain Name (Unknown)
IP Address 12.104.41.# (MARSHALL,DENNEHEY,WARNER,COLEMAN)
ISP AT&T WorldNet Services
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Macintosh WinNT
Browser Safari 1.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.41 Safari/535.1
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor
Resolution : 1280 x 1024
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit Jul 6 2011 10:08:54 am
Last Page View Jul 6 2011 10:30:45 am
Visit Length 21 minutes 51 seconds
Page Views 5
Referring URL http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=there%27s%20also%20been%20a%20baby%20death%20locally%20to%20me%20that%20is%20allegedly%20due%20to%20HIT%20PACS%20interference%20in%20otherwise%20simple%20care
Search Engine google.com
Search Words there's also been a baby death locally to me that is allegedly due to hit pacs interference in otherwise simple care
Visit Entry Page http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/06/babys-death-spotlights-safety-risks.html
Visit Exit Page http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/06/babys-death-spotlights-safety-risks.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Jul 6 2011 10:08:54 am
Visit Number 902,836

Yesterday:

Domain Name (Unknown)
IP Address 12.104.41.# (MARSHALL,DENNEHEY,WARNER,COLEMAN)
ISP AT&T WorldNet Services
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Macintosh WinNT
Browser Safari 1.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/13.0.782.41 Safari/535.1
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 1024
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit Jul 5 2011 9:07:13 am
Last Page View Jul 5 2011 9:08:46 am
Visit Length 1 minute 33 seconds
Page Views 4
Referring URL http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=health%20care%20renewal
Search Engine google.com
Search Words health care renewal
Visit Entry Page http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/
Visit Exit Page http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/06/electronic-medication-prescribing-magic.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Jul 5 2011 9:07:13 am
Visit Number 902,285

and an older one:

Domain Name (Unknown)
IP Address 12.104.41.# (MARSHALL,DENNEHEY,WARNER,COLEMAN)
ISP AT&T WorldNet Services
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Macintosh WinNT
Browser Safari 1.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/534.24 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/11.0.696.28 Safari/534.24
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 1024
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit Apr 4 2011 12:12:05 pm
Last Page View Apr 4 2011 12:33:44 pm
Visit Length 21 minutes 39 seconds
Page Views 30
Referring URL
Visit Entry Page http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/
Visit Exit Page http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/malpractices-of-multitudes-mission.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Apr 4 2011 12:12:05 pm
Visit Number 860,621

Note 30 page views in the latter data.

-- SS