healthy4u: Fred Schulte

FDA on health IT risk: reckless, or another GM-like political coverup? "We don't know the magnitude of the risk, and what we do know is the tip of the iceberg, but health IT is of 'sufficiently low risk' that we don't need to regulate it."

In my Sept. 16, 2013 post "An Open Letter to David Bates, MD, Chair, ONC FDASIA Health IT Policy Committee on Recommendations Against Premarket Testing and Validation of Health IT" (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/09/an-open-letter-to-david-bates-md-chair.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/09/an-open-letter-to-david-bates-md-chair.html</a>) I wrote: <blockquote class="tr_bq">David Bates, Chair, ONC FDASIA Health IT Policy Committee via email     Dear David, I am disappointed (and in fact appalled) at the ONC FDASIA Health IT Policy Committee's recommendations that health IT including typical commercial EHR/CPOE systems not be subjected to a premarket testing and validation process.  I believe this recommendation is, quite frankly, negligent. </blockquote> The resultant April 2014 report is out: "FDASIA Health IT Report: Proposed Strategy and Recommendations for a Risk-Based Framework."  It is available at <a href="http://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/fdasiahealthitreport_final.pdf">http://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/fdasiahealthitreport_final.pdf</a>. The report is an academic idealist's and industry's dream.  It is a patient's nightmare. Instead of regulation, the report recommends the creation of a nebulous "Health IT Safety Center" (pgs. 16 and 25) as a "public-private entity with broad stakeholder engagement, that includes a governance structure for the creation of a sustainable, integrated health IT learning system that avoids regulatory duplication and leverages and complements existing and ongoing efforts."  In other words, a toothless organization without true regulatory authority. The recommendations of the Health IT Policy Committee have apparently been taken seriously by FDA.  This FDA announcement recently appeared (FDA is part of HHS): <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm390988.htm">http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm390988.htm</a> HHS News Release For Immediate Release: April 3, 2014 Proposed health IT strategy aims to promote innovation, protect patients, and avoid regulatory duplication HHS today released a draft report that includes a proposed strategy and recommendations for a health information technology (health IT) framework, which promotes product innovation while maintaining appropriate patient protections and avoiding regulatory duplication. The congressionally mandated report was developed in consultation with health IT experts and consumer representatives and proposes to clarify oversight of health IT products based on a product’s function and the potential risk to patients who use it. ... As proposed in the draft report, posted on the ONC, FDA and FCC websites, there would be three health IT categories, based on function and level of risk, that focus on what the product does, not on the platform on which it operates (mobile medical device, PC, or cloud-based, for example). The first category, products with administrative health IT functions, poses little or no risk to patient safety and as such requires no additional oversight. They include software for billing and claims processing, scheduling, and practice and inventory management. The second category, products with health management heath IT functions, includes software for health information and data management, medication management, provider order entry, knowledge management, electronic access to clinical results and most clinical decision support software. Products with health management health IT functions are of sufficiently low risk and thus, if they meet the statutory definition of a medical device, FDA does not intend to focus its oversight on them. Instead, the draft report proposes relying primarily on ONC-coordinated activities and private sector capabilities that highlight quality management principles, industry standards and best practices.</blockquote> The characterization of these admitted medical devices as "sufficiently low risk" is in my opinion grossly negligent (if not criminal). For instance, GM concealed an ignition flaw that resulted in 13 deaths.  Look what's happening now in that sector.  Revelations of corporate wrongdoing and Congressional investigations: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/business/us-regulators-declined-full-inquiry-into-gm-ignition-flaws-memo-shows.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/31/business/us-regulators-declined-full-inquiry-into-gm-ignition-flaws-memo-shows.html</a> U.S. Agency Knew About G.M. Flaw but Did Not Act By MATTHEW L. WALD MARCH 30, 2014 Federal regulators decided not to open an inquiry on the ignitions of Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars even after their own investigators reported in 2007 that they knew of four fatal crashes, 29 complaints and 14 other reports that showed the problem disabled air bags, according to a memo released by a House subcommittee on Sunday. Then in 2010, the safety agency came to the same decision after receiving more reports that air bags were not deploying. The memo also revealed that General Motors approved the faulty design of the switch in 2002 even though the company that made the part, Delphi, warned the automaker that the switch did not meet specifications. This followed a warning the year before — when the Saturn Ion was being developed — but G.M. said that “a design change had solved the problem,” according to the memo. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage The striking new details in the memo bolster the contention that both G.M. and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than previously acknowledged, ignored or dismissed warnings for more than a decade about a faulty ignition switch that, if bumped, could turn off, shutting the engine and disabling the air bags. General Motors has recalled nearly 2.6 million cars and has linked 13 deaths to the defect. </blockquote> 13 deaths, and we get this: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="362" data-total-count="2158" itemprop="articleBody">A House subcommittee, which gathered more than 200,000 pages of documents from G.M. and 6,000 pages from the agency, will hold a hearing on Tuesday. Mary T. Barra, General Motors’ chief executive, and David Friedman, the acting administrator of the safety agency, are scheduled to testify. Both are also scheduled to testify before a Senate panel on Wednesday.</div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="362" data-total-count="2158" itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="241" data-total-count="2399" itemprop="articleBody">“The problems persisted over a decade, the red flags were many, and yet those responsible failed to connect the dots,” Fred Upton, a Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement.</div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="241" data-total-count="2399" itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="104" data-total-count="2503" itemprop="articleBody">The most damaging finding in the memo concerned the four fatal crashes that went unheeded by regulators.</div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="104" data-total-count="2503" itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="224" data-total-count="2727" id="story-continues-5" itemprop="articleBody">In a presentation dated Nov. 17, 2007, the safety agency’s investigators reported to its Office of Defects Investigation on the fatal crashes, as well as broad range of complaints and other reports about cars shutting off.</div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="224" data-total-count="2727" id="story-continues-5" itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="355" data-total-count="3082" itemprop="articleBody">“The panel did not identify any discernible trend and decided not to pursue a more formal investigation,” the House memo said. The findings <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/business/auto-regulators-dismissed-defect-tied-to-13-deaths.html" title="The report. ">reinforce an analysis</a> by The New York Times published March 8 that found the agency had received more than 260 complaints about Cobalts, Ions and other cars in the recall, citing potentially dangerous shutdowns.</div></blockquote> While GM is being grilled and raked over the coals, the health IT industry is likely going to get the healthcare industry's most generous and unprecedented special regulatory accommodation by FDA due to its products being deemed of "sufficiently low risk" (?) not to merit attention. -------------------------------------------- <div> </div>The FDA statement is particularly reckless, perhaps criminally so, given the following ten points. I add that the following are just highlights off the top of my head, and non-inclusive of all known facts on health IT risk: (1)  FDA's own 2010 "Internal Memo on HIT Risk", "not intended for public use" but exposed by Center for Public Integrity investigative reporter Fred Schulte (<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/fred-schulte">http://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/fred-schulte</a>) when he was with the Huffington Post Investigative Fund (as described at <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/smoking-gun-internal-fda-memorandum-of.html" target="_blank">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/smoking-gun-internal-fda-memorandum-of.html</a>), stated:   <div style="margin-left: 40px;">...In summary, the results of this data review suggest significant clinical implications and public safety issues surrounding Health Information Technology. The most commonly reported H-IT safety issues included wrong patient/wrong data, medication administration issues, clinical data loss/miscalculation, and unforeseen software design issues; all of which have varying impact on the patient’s clinical care and outcome, which included 6 death and 43 injuries. The absence of mandatory reporting enforcement of H-IT safety issues limits the number of relevant MDRs [device reports] and impedes a more comprehensive understanding of the actual problems and implications. </div><div dir="ltr"></div> They then go on to categorize the known risk factors and the impediments to knowing about their occurrence:  <blockquote class="tr_bq">Limitations of the MAUDE search and final subset of MDRs include the following:  1. Not all H-IT safety issue MDRs can be captured due to limitations of reporting practices including ...(a) Vast number of H-IT systems that interface with multiple medical devices currently assigned to multiple procodes making it difficult to identify specific procodes for H-IT safety issues; ...(b) Procode assignments are also affected by the ability of the reporter/contractor to correctly identify the event as a H-IT safety issue; ...(c) Correct identification by the reporter of the suspect device brand name is challenged by difficulties discerning the actual H-IT system versus the device it supports. 2. Due to incomplete information in the MDRs, it is difficult to unduplicate similar reports, potentially resulting in a higher number of reports than actual events. 3. Reported death and injury events may only be associated with the reported device but not necessarily attributed to the device. 4 Correct identification by the reporter of the manufacturer name is convoluted by the inability to discern the manufacturer of the actual H-IT system versus the device it supports. 5 The volume of MDR reporting to MAUDE may be impacted by a lack of understanding the reportability of H-IT safety issues and enforcement of such reporting.</blockquote> In other words, FDA does not know the level of risk due to systematic impediments to information diffusion. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRf0xG1UixoduxWOjXHN0BAMipTO7-63_YQZ4NKtaFyhMvkpdfo7MwpGBU8O0c6XKxBEM4owWvWl0RBV1amw0nVtJlMCMEwEy-o2fovaDZWLYJRc2uY6hS34Kl-lWLwwl9m-iZySg9o4b5/s1600/memo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRf0xG1UixoduxWOjXHN0BAMipTO7-63_YQZ4NKtaFyhMvkpdfo7MwpGBU8O0c6XKxBEM4owWvWl0RBV1amw0nVtJlMCMEwEy-o2fovaDZWLYJRc2uY6hS34Kl-lWLwwl9m-iZySg9o4b5/s1600/memo.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Internal FDA Memo ("not intended for public use") on potential dangers of health IT.  Download the full PDF by clicking <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/Internal-FDA-Report-on-Adverse-Events-Involving-Health-Information-IT.pdf">here</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table> I think it axiomatic to state that it is, at best, seriously misleading to now state a technology is of "low risk" while internally having admitted that the risk level is not known due to impediments to that knowledge.  That situation has not changed since this memo's internal FDA dissemination, and its disclosure by Schulte. This is inexplicable on its face on scientific grounds. Further, another HHS agency, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, <a href="http://www.ahrq.gov/">http://www.ahrq.gov/</a>) has also taxonomized in detail a rich tapestry of "how health IT can cause harm."  See "AHRQ Health IT Hazards Manager Report" at <a href="http://healthit.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/docs/citation/HealthITHazardManagerFinalReport.pdf">http://healthit.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/docs/citation/HealthITHazardManagerFinalReport.pdf</a> and its contained list of harms on pg. 29, reproduced below. AHRQ has no regulatory authority.  These failure modes are expensive to deal with, thus many will likely only be dealt with by the industry (if at all) after patient harms or near-misses.  Patients, however, are not experimental subjects for the debugging and "improvement" of experimental IT systems. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGfJvUqIoCXmUuiiiqJvolkT3Ncg9DoM4VResY7HhOBmbfdZj29hKbwxLRTUbMi7gbaSCfQNdqcKqI6SKWi0JKIyOrHFgBfL3D0-rzEHwfVx6Lm37KilOi8LjiEUBdIzyH9oH47wXprM7H/s1600/ahrq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGfJvUqIoCXmUuiiiqJvolkT3Ncg9DoM4VResY7HhOBmbfdZj29hKbwxLRTUbMi7gbaSCfQNdqcKqI6SKWi0JKIyOrHFgBfL3D0-rzEHwfVx6Lm37KilOi8LjiEUBdIzyH9oH47wXprM7H/s1600/ahrq.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">AHRQ Health IT Hazard Manager Report - Hazard Modes of Health IT (click to enlarge)</td></tr></tbody></table> Surely FDASIA is aware of this. <div>(2)  FDA CDRH Director Jeff Shuren MD, JD's own statement that the known risks are "the tip of an iceberg" at the HIT Policy Committee, Adoption/Certification Workgroup on February 25, 2010, where the topic was "HIT safety" (The text is available <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120320111030/http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_11673_910717_0_0_18/3Shuren_Testimony022510.pdf" target="_blank">at this link</a>): <div style="margin-left: 40px;">...... In the past two years, we [FDA] have received 260 reports of HIT-related malfunctions with the potential for patient harm – including 44 reported injuries and 6 reported deaths. Because these reports are purely voluntary, they may represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the HIT-related problems that exist.</div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div> Considering the admitted impediments to information diffusion, it's likely even at this point that FDA knew the number of injuries and deaths was far larger than GM's mere 13 ignition defect-related deaths. </div><div> </div><div><div>(3)   FDA's MAUDE (Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience) database is a voluntary medical device defects reporting system, but is not specifically purposed for health IT and is almost unknown to typical health IT users as a resource for reporting flaws.  MAUDE reports show health IT devices are literally festooned with an incredible number of flaws, as if they come from dirt-floor-covered software sweatshops with little oversight. These are defects that have made it into live hospital and caregiver devices, and have led to reported harms and death (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/01/maude-and-hit-risk-mother-mary-what-in.html" target="_blank">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/01/maude-and-hit-risk-mother-mary-what-in.html</a>). The voluntary nature of this MAUDE reporting by just a few HIT sellers, and lack of knowledge of it by health IT users as a resource, cannot fail to lead to the conclusion that the problems are far worse than this limited dataset indicates. (4)  The prestigious U.S. Institute of Medicine of the National Academies (<a href="http://www.iom.edu/">http://www.iom.edu/</a>), perhaps the top scientific authority in this country, also admitted the risk levels of health IT were unknown due to systematic impediments to knowing.  IOM noted this in their <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/iom-report-on-health-it-safety-nix-fda.html">late 2011 study on EHR safety</a>:</div></div><div> <blockquote>... While some studies suggest improvements in patient safety can be made, others have found no effect. Instances of health IT–associated harm have been reported. However, little published evidence could be found quantifying the magnitude of the risk. Several reasons health IT–related safety data are lacking include the absence of measures and a central repository (or linkages among decentralized repositories) to collect, analyze, and act on information related to safety of this technology. Another impediment to gathering safety data is contractual barriers (e.g., nondisclosure, confidentiality clauses) that can prevent users from sharing information about health IT–related adverse events. These barriers limit users’ abilities to share knowledge of risk-prone user interfaces, for instance through screenshots and descriptions of potentially unsafe processes. In addition, some vendors include language in their sales contracts and escape responsibility for errors or defects in their software (i.e., “hold harmless clauses”). The committee believes these types of contractual restrictions limit transparency, which significantly contributes to the gaps in knowledge of health IT–related patient safety risks. </blockquote> The IOM did note, contrary to FDA's current finding that these systems are of "sufficiently low risk", that: <blockquote>These barriers to generating evidence pose unacceptable risks to safety.[IOM (Institute of Medicine). 2012. <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/Patient%20Safety%20and%20Health%20IT%20prepub.pdf">Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care</a> (PDF). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, pg. S-2.] </blockquote> Also in the IOM report: <blockquote class="tr_bq">… “For example, the number of patients who receive the correct medication in hospitals increases when these hospitals implement well-planned, robust computerized prescribing mechanisms and use barcoding systems. But even in these instances, the ability to generalize the results across the health care system may be limited. For other products— including electronic health records, which are being employed with more and more frequency— some studies find improvements in patient safety, while other studies find no effect. More worrisome, some case reports suggest that poorly designed health IT can create new hazards in the already complex delivery of care. Although the magnitude of the risk associated with health IT is not known, some examples illustrate the concerns. Dosing errors, failure to detect life-threatening illnesses, and delaying treatment due to poor human–computer interactions or loss of data have led to serious injury and death.”</blockquote></div><div></div><div> IOM could not have stated the reality more explicitly than via their statement "the magnitude of the risk associated with health IT is not known." </div><div> (5)   Surely FDA (and the FDASIA committees responsible for the new Report) are aware of  the ECRI Institute's Deep Dive study results from a study they carried out within their PSO-member hospitals (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/peering-underneath-icebergs-water-level.html" target="_blank">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/peering-underneath-icebergs-water-level.html</a>).  I would call 171 voluntarily-reported health IT-related mishaps in 36 hospitals over 9 weeks, with 8 injuries and 3 possible deaths, an alarming study. In fact, in 2014 based on their PSO data, the ECRI Institute identified health IT as #1 of the "Top Ten Technology Risks in Healthcare" (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-ecri-institutes-new-2014-top-10.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/04/in-ecri-institutes-new-2014-top-10.html</a>): <blockquote class="tr_bq">CONCERN #1: Data integrity failures with health information technology systems  With the federal government offering financial incentives for hospitals and physician practices to adopt EHR systems, use of these systems more than tripled from 2009 through 2012. “Health IT systems are very complex,” says James P. Keller, M.S., vice president, technology evaluation and safety, ECRI Institute. “They are managing a lot of information, and it’s easy to get something wrong” if the systems are not designed and implemented well. While appropriately designed and implemented systems can provide complete, current, and accurate patient care information so that the clinician can make appropriate treatment decisions, the presence of incorrect data can lead to incorrect treatment, potentially leading to patient harm.</blockquote></div><div></div><div> I certainly would NOT aver that this technology's risk level is of "sufficiently low risk" to not warrant formal regulation by a body skilled in software regulation, as is FDA., e.g., for medical devices and for IT used in pharmaceutical clinical trials data management and drug manufacturing. See for example "General Principles of Software Validation; Final Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff" at <a href="http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/deviceregulationandguidance/guidancedocuments/ucm085281.htm">http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/deviceregulationandguidance/guidancedocuments/ucm085281.htm</a>. (I would really not enjoy being in a position to have to make such an averment about "sufficiently low risk" under GM ignition investigation-like conditions... )</div><div> </div>(6)  Surely FDA (and the FDASIA committees responsible for the new Report) are aware of the data reported by the medical malpractice insurer CRICO, that insures the Harvard medical community (see <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/02/patient-safety-quality-healthcare.html" target="_blank">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/02/patient-safety-quality-healthcare.html</a>): <blockquote class="tr_bq">... CRICO recently analyzed a year’s worth of medical malpractice claims in its comparative database [from numerous sources] and found 147 cases in which EHRs were a contributing factor. Computer systems that don’t “talk” to each other, test results that aren’t routed properly, and mistakes caused by faulty data entry or copying and pasting were among the EHR-related problems found in the claims, which represented $61 million in direct payments and legal expenses.  ... Half of the 147 cases resulted in severe injury.  [Death numbers are unstated - ed.] </blockquote> Note that these numbers were an examination of lawsuits filed; most medical malpractice never gets to the point of an actual filed lawsuit due to the unfavorable economics of the medical malpractice industry.  Perhaps 5% of actual events ever get filed, thus CRICO's data is also a "tip of an iceberg." (7)  Surely FDA (and the FDASIA committees responsible for the new Report) are aware of mass risk introduced by faulty systems such as in the incident in Rhode Island, at Lifespan Healthcare (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/lifespan-rhode-island-yet-another.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/lifespan-rhode-island-yet-another.html</a>), where thousands of prescriptions were altered by faulty HIT without physician knowledge.  Suffixes for the long acting version of a drug (e.g., "XL" or "XR") were dropped: <blockquote class="tr_bq">PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Rhode Island State Senator Jamie Doyle says he is shocked to hear a <a href="http://www.lifespan.org/">Lifespan</a> computer glitch caused thousands of patients to receive the wrong types of medication. [Appx. 2,000 across five Lifespan hospitals according to the Providence Journal, see below, and the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ri-senator-wants-investigation-after-up-to-2000-hospital-patients-got-wrong-form-of-medicine/2011/11/03/gIQAufcviM_story.html">WaPo</a> - ed.] Doyle is now calling for an independent review of all the hospitals Lifespan runs, and a review of the Rhode Island Department of Health. The DOH is investigating after learning patients who were supposed to receive medications taken once a day instead received medications meant to be taken more than once per day.  [In other words, they were taking short acting drugs on a long-acting once a day schedule, thus being massively under-dosed - ed.]</blockquote> (8)  The FDA (and the FDASIA committees responsible for the new Report) surely cannot be unaware of all of the "glitches" reported on in-situ health IT systems, as cataloged at this blog under the tag "glitch" and as of this writing numbering 25 posts, some including patient deaths.  See the results of the query link: <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/glitch">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/glitch</a>. (9) Surely FDA (and the FDASIA committees responsible for the new Report) cannot be unaware that FDA itself had to recall health IT with flaws "serious enough to cause patient death": <blockquote class="tr_bq">FDA recall.  McKesson Anesthesia Care – Patient Case Data May Not Match Patient Data:  Use of this affected product may cause serious adverse health consequences, including death.  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/03/ehr-recall-use-of-this-affected-product.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/03/ehr-recall-use-of-this-affected-product.html</a> FDA Recalls Draeger Health IT Device Because "This Product May Cause Serious Adverse Health Consequences, Including Death" <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/12/fda-recalls-health-it-software-because.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/12/fda-recalls-health-it-software-because.html</a> FDA Recall: Philips Xcelera Connect - Incomplete Information Arriving From Other Systems <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/07/health-it-fda-recall-philips-xcelera.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/07/health-it-fda-recall-philips-xcelera.html</a> FDA recall:  An ED EHR "Glitch" That Mangles Prescriptions <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-good-way-to-cynernetically-harm-or.html" target="_blank">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-good-way-to-cynernetically-harm-or.html</a> </blockquote> (10)  FDA (and the FDASIA committees responsible for the new Report) are surely not unaware of my own report to its MAUDE database (because the hospital denied my request to issue the report itself) of a fundamental defect in a widely used health IT system, Eclipsys Sunrise, that nearly caused the death of my mother... AFTER she was seriously injured due to a flaw in an ED's EHR that did lead a year later to her death: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfmaude/detail.cfm?mdrfoi__id=172955">http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfmaude/detail.cfm?mdrfoi__id=172955</a>2 ECLIPSYS SUNRISE CLINICAL MANAGER       Event Date 06/12/2010 Event Type  Injury   Patient Outcome  Hospitalization,Other,Life Threatening,Required Intervention Event Description The eclipsys sunrise clinical manager emr/cpoe is in use at (b) (6) hospital. This system appears to have a serious deficiency: an apparent lack of date constraint validity checking when users are seeking information on prior medication orders and administration. (b) (6), (b) (6) was admitted (b) (6) 2010, for cerebrovascular problems. Famotidine iv was started prophylactically to prevent gastric problems, but was discontinued and changed to protonix a few days later due to suspicion of causing severe agitation and confusion, causing her to pull her lines. Around (b) (6) 2010, patient was transferred to physical therapy floor in the hospital. Hospital considers such a transfer to be a "discharge" and "readmission. " however, patient did poorly, had to be sent back to med-surg floor several days later. Due to having pulled a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube -peg tube-, she was started on TPN on (b) (6) 2010. In the first bag of tpn solution was 40 mg. Famotidine. Patient's mental status began deteriorating and she began to get very, very agitated and confused once again. Eclipsys sunrise problem/bug was noted when son, a physician informaticist -and author of this report- noted the 40 mg famotidine in the tpn bag, and reported to the floor rn that this was contraindicated. The rn pulled up the medication order and administration records on the eclipsys sunrise clinical manager system to confirm famotidine had been administered previously. Famotidine was shown only as being ordered for tpn on (b) (6), but not prior. The rn selected a date constraint entry box, at which time a calendar widget popped up. The rn set the date constraint back to (b) (6), then (b) (6), then (b) (6) 2010, but the use of the famotidine at that time did not appear. Son of patient demanded the famotidine be stopped anyway, which it was, and that an allergy entry be entered. However, it was fortunate son was a physician and remembered the name of the medicine. In tracing this error today, it was found that the data from admission on (b) (6) to "discharge" to physical therapy floor (b) (6) 2010, was unavailable since it was considered a "prior admission" although the patient had never left the hospital physically. The sunrise system, however, failed to flag the (b) (6) 2010 date constraint entries as 'out of bounds' for the current admission. The validity of the date constraints was not checked, preventing the rn user from realizing he should have called up the prior admissions records. If son of patient had not been a physician, famotidine might have been continued and patient might have suffered more severe consequences than she did after the 40 mg was given in the first tpn bag. As it was, she spent the next three days in a severe delirium and is only slowly recovering. That the eclipsys sunrise ehr did not alert its user that the date constraints they set for seeking medication ordering and administration data were out of bounds -beyond the range of the current "admission" -is a significant and severe oversight and/or bg, and a danger to patients not fortunate enough to have a physician informaticist son closely monitoring their care. </blockquote> Addendum May 4, 2014: (11)   CMS: "we do not have any information that supports or refutes claims that a broader adoption of EHRs can save lives."  (But let's spend hundreds of billions of dollars anyway.) <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKNTHRZ65twX8W-4VKJyyfOxz-EKIMmIfoipBwryewkc-IKs_JkusXtcujYkfmjqkzRE_1FyX0m7GAS3X-MTb0rq0yeup3rRxjRKLk2xmnWlO6BLlwHE0rJOqULoHziPGyOKQnO3Jkb2La/s1600/CMS_Letter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKNTHRZ65twX8W-4VKJyyfOxz-EKIMmIfoipBwryewkc-IKs_JkusXtcujYkfmjqkzRE_1FyX0m7GAS3X-MTb0rq0yeup3rRxjRKLk2xmnWlO6BLlwHE0rJOqULoHziPGyOKQnO3Jkb2La/s1600/CMS_Letter.jpg" width="308" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CMS: "we do not have any information that supports or refutes claims that a broader adoption of EHRs can save lives."  [But let's spend hundreds of billions of dollars anyway.]  Click to enlarge.</td></tr></tbody></table> -------------------------------------------- Note that these ten points themselves, all I had time to write about this morning, themselves represent a "tip of the iceberg" regarding health IT risks. In my opinion it's immensely reckless for FDA to make a statement that "products with health management heath IT functions, includes software for health information and data management, medication management, provider order entry, knowledge management, electronic access to clinical results and most clinical decision support software ... are of sufficiently low risk" so as to not warrant formal regulation that is already in place for other healthcare software sectors. Fortunately, the public gets to comment via this announcement: Proposed Risk-Based Regulatory Framework and Strategy for Health Information Technology Report; Notice to Public of Availability of the Report and Web Site Location; Request for Comments <a href="http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA_FRDOC_0001-4678">http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA_FRDOC_0001-4678</a> I feel, however, that the decision is a given, and that the health IT industry has such regulatory capture that public comments will be ignored.  (Not that I won't try.) Finally: I ponder what ever happened to the inquiry responses about health IT defects and harm sought by the Senate Finance Committee, as reported in the Washington Post: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Electronic medical records draw frequent criticisms By Alexi Mostrous Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 25, 2009 <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102400967.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/24/AR2009102400967.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR</a> ... the Senate Finance Committee has amassed a thick file of testimony alleging serious computer flaws from doctors, patients and engineers unhappy with current systems. On Oct. 16, the panel wrote to 10 major sellers of electronic record systems, demanding to know, for example, what steps they had taken to safeguard patients. "Every accountability measure ought to be used to track the stimulus money invested in health information technology," said <a href="http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/g000386/" target="">Sen. Charles E. Grassley</a> (Iowa), the panel's ranking Republican. </blockquote> The results of that request seem to have gone to the recycle bin. -- SS

FDA on health IT risk: reckless, or another GM-like political coverup? "We don't know the magnitude of the risk, and what we do know is the tip of the iceberg, but health IT is of 'sufficiently low risk' that we don't need to regulate it."

In my Sept. 16, 2013 post "An Open Letter to David Bates, MD, Chair, ONC FDASIA Health IT Policy Committee on Recommendations Against Premarket Testing and Validation of Health IT" (http://hcrenewal…

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09 Apr 2014

AMA says EHRs create 'appalling Catch-22' for docs - And just how many experts does it take to screw in a light bulb, anyway?

(NOTE:  this post, being about minor matters like death and financial mayhem, is particularly and unusually [even for me] biting and lacking in euphemisms and political correctness.  If you are easily offended and want the latter, and/or believe we all need to be 'nice' about banal issues like patient injury and death, fraud, and other minor matters, click here:  <a href="http://www.disney.com/">http://www.disney.com</a> and skip the post below.) You were warned. --------------------------------------- At some point, so-called EHR "experts" and pundits need to stop being accommodated for their having ignored years of warnings, complaints, "anecdotes" -a particularly egregious term that comes from those who don't understand risk management, especially academics of the echo chamber-egghead subspecies (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/08/from-senior-clinician-down-under.html">link</a>) - and other signs that health IT is not a beneficent, omniscient gift from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Kobol">Lords of Kobol.</a> (The latter is a pun on the business-IT programming language Cobol, of course.) Instead, they simply need to be ridiculed for being stupid. I will do so:  folks, you have been, and remain, stupid: <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZE95zecrMVRB1bq9q2g01AUsab2c67jIhlE-ARIcXChO_6KSU5IP-c2sQpFyO-MiKOXWOOrpyAZAeWR-1L3VIpsiYWG_2dldo8bUN1af4BuG8p24xo2u2V_pTviw9_w3ZMLvXbAvwG9Zo/s1600/cow3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZE95zecrMVRB1bq9q2g01AUsab2c67jIhlE-ARIcXChO_6KSU5IP-c2sQpFyO-MiKOXWOOrpyAZAeWR-1L3VIpsiYWG_2dldo8bUN1af4BuG8p24xo2u2V_pTviw9_w3ZMLvXbAvwG9Zo/s200/cow3.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Bovine Stare of Incomprehension (click to enlarge)</td></tr></tbody></table> The Bovine Stare of Incomprehension describes the reactions I've gotten over the years to many warnings about health IT.  It was like talking to a cow. So now there's this: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.govhealthit.com/news/ama-says-ehrs-create-appalling-catch-22-docs">AMA says EHRs create 'appalling Catch-22' for docs</a> May 03, 2013 | Tom Sullivan, Editor As the healthcare industry moves to EHRs, the medical record has essentially been reduced to a tool for billing, compliance, and litigation that also has a sustained negative impact on doctors' productivity, according to Steven J. Stack, MD, chair of the American Medical Association’s board of trustees. </blockquote> Gee, they're only realizing and complaining about that - now?  In 2013? <blockquote class="tr_bq">“Documenting a full clinical encounter in an EHR is pure torment,” Stack said during the CMS Listening Session: Billing and Coding with Electronic Health Records on Friday. </blockquote> (What, the "pure torment" in such a mission-critical function only started with the most recent patches installed last month on the nation's EHRs?  EHRs were just dandy until then?) It's nice to know in May 2013 that “documenting a full clinical encounter [essential to avoid injurious and even lethal mistakes, I anecdotally note - ed.] in an EHR is "pure torment”, several years into an accelerated "National Program for HIT in the HHS" costing hundreds of billions of dollars. I guess sites like this blog, <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/">this site</a> extant since 1998, and <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=readinglist">other materials</a> written over the years by backwards stubborn health IT iconoclast fear-mongering Luddites were beyond the comprehension level of - those now proffering the exact same pronouncements. <blockquote class="tr_bq">EHRs are also driving the industry toward charts that look remarkably similar because they’re based on templates created by the technology vendors — that includes often using the same words. And that threatens to make doctors appear to be committing fraud by the practice of record cloning, or cutting and pasting from one record to another, when they are not, in fact, acting fraudulently. </blockquote> I guess putting patients in mortal danger from note cloning (and to those too stupid to understand why that is, get off your rear end and look it up, I'm not going to spoon-feed you) is a step better than acting fraudulently... <blockquote class="tr_bq">Alongside the federal mandate to implement an EHR under threat of a monetary fine, that creates what Stack called “an appalling Catch-22 for physicians.” Put another way: The government mandates that doctors use an EHR, the EHR vendors’ templates can sometimes create an appearance of fraud and that, in turn, opens the door for payers to decline reimbursement or, even worse, the government to prosecute doctors for the crime.</blockquote> I guess actual fraud is just anecdotal. <blockquote class="tr_bq">As dire as that sounds, it's an exception that belies the unproven perception that EHRs perpetuate fraud. “Upcoding does not necessarily equate to fraud and abuse,” said Sue Bowman, AHIMA’s senior director of coding and compliance at the same event. “This is an area where more study is needed. We really need to know the causes. Further research is needed on the fraud risk of using EHRs.”</blockquote> Sure, let's study while rolling this stuff out as frantically as we can.  We'll fix it later -- and Jesus, I guess, will heal and reanimate any patients actually harmed by the technology (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/peering-underneath-icebergs-water-level.html">link</a> to ECRI Institute Deep Dive Study: 36 hospitals!  Nine weeks!  171 health information technology-related problems voluntarily reported!  Eight injuries!  Three possible deaths!  All mere "anecdotes", of course). <blockquote class="tr_bq">Indeed, Jacob Reider, MD, CMO of ONC, explained that the government and industry do not have good data right now proving whether or not EHRs trigger fraud and abuse.</blockquote> Per the IOM, the same industry does not have good data on harms levels.  (The previous link to a recent small ECRI "Deep Dive" study's probably the most robust we've got on that score, and the figures are not encouraging). So - let's review - <ul><li>poor data on harms, </li><li>poor data on benefits, </li><li>poor data on fraud and abuse.</li></ul>  The logical, ethical course of action thus is: <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzFC_WsPusjorZPhSFY5JNJs4lrt-V5x8PZiENWJVqP7gPQUwxbtq0bhjwtsjUvHuXdwrMUrEOAhghWrHjEV5pRduQIHRcyj9uMkKL4OC1x87NkSBUQTkZ2MFlroX8uK0YIz8pxcKCC1jP/s1600/homer-simpson.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzFC_WsPusjorZPhSFY5JNJs4lrt-V5x8PZiENWJVqP7gPQUwxbtq0bhjwtsjUvHuXdwrMUrEOAhghWrHjEV5pRduQIHRcyj9uMkKL4OC1x87NkSBUQTkZ2MFlroX8uK0YIz8pxcKCC1jP/s200/homer-simpson.gif" width="165" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">D'OH!  LET'S ROLL THE TECHNOLOGY OUT AS FAST AS WE CAN, AND PENALIZE NON-ADOPTERS BESIDES!</td></tr></tbody></table> See how simple logic, ethics and clear thinking can be? <blockquote class="tr_bq">“There is concern that some doctors are using the EHR to obtain payments to which they are not entitled,” said Mickey McGlynn of Siemens Medical Solutions and HIMSS EHR Association. “Any fraud is an important issue and we, as the vendor community, take that very seriously.”</blockquote> Only after independent whistleblower investigations by <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/health/medicare/cracking-codes">Fred Schulte of the Center for Public Integrity ("Cracking the Codes")</a>, and by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/medicare-billing-rises-at-hospitals-with-electronic-records.html?_r=0">New York Times reporters Reed Abelson and Julie Creswell</a>, that is... <blockquote class="tr_bq"> AMA’s Stack offered a triptych of suggestions to CMS and ONC: address EHR usability concerns, provide guidance on EHR use for coding and billing, and make meaningful use stage 2 more flexible for providers. “My purpose is not to denigrate EHRs,” Stack said, explaining that he believes CMS and ONC are genuinely trying to better the current situation.</blockquote> Nice to have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_Milquetoast">Caspar Milquetoast </a> on the side of EHR criticism. Knock knock, anyone home, McFly? <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtRtjpOxhXTclN2k84gzTCHH0QfGVK4EArboCbP3IGByDNyfeuK8KnsHHBwxufCjhZMfBaX_fi2c3IJcMZ0Ld8LH_e9O9fNum3CO4Vrr-U1ZhuGyPRyBVFK3qZ_kYUNFkVGqyPAHOgcBZO/s1600/hello-mcfly1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtRtjpOxhXTclN2k84gzTCHH0QfGVK4EArboCbP3IGByDNyfeuK8KnsHHBwxufCjhZMfBaX_fi2c3IJcMZ0Ld8LH_e9O9fNum3CO4Vrr-U1ZhuGyPRyBVFK3qZ_kYUNFkVGqyPAHOgcBZO/s320/hello-mcfly1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Knock knock, anyone home, McFly?</td></tr></tbody></table> Today's EHR systems, for the aforementioned reasons above and more, deserve denigration for patients' sake. <blockquote class="tr_bq"> There are efforts underway, within the government and industry, to more comprehensively understand the unintended consequences of EHR implementation.</blockquote> But let's keep rollin' em out, anyway.  Wheeee!  What fun! Class action attorneys, are you listening? -- SS

AMA says EHRs create 'appalling Catch-22' for docs - And just how many experts does it take to screw in a light bulb, anyway?

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05 May 2013

Fred Schulte: "GOP senators call for overhaul of electronic health records program"

Fred Schulte, investigative reporter at the Center for Public Integrity (<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/fred-schulte">link to bio</a>), has authored a new article worth reading in its entirety: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/04/16/12508/gop-senators-call-overhaul-electronic-health-records-program">GOP senators call for overhaul of electronic health records program</a> Lawmakers say Obama's $35 billion initiative pushing health information technology isn't working. Six U.S. Senators are calling for an overhaul of the federal government’s $35 billion plan for doctors and hospitals to switch from paper to electronic medical records, citing concerns from patient privacy to possible Medicare billing fraud. The <a href="http://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=0cf0490e-76af-4934-b534-83f5613c7370">report</a> issued Tuesday by the half-dozen Republicans concedes that many lawmakers and medical experts believe the digital systems can reduce health care costs and improve the quality of care by reducing duplicative testing and cutting down on medical errors.  [Eventually, and with great effort the details of which many in the field lacking appropriate education and expertise are painfully unaware - ed.] But the report asserts that the Obama administration’s push to use billions of dollars in stimulus money helping doctors and hospitals buy digital systems needs to be “recalibrated.” “Now, nearly four years after the enactment…and after hundreds of pages of regulations implementing the program,” the document says, “we see evidence that the program is at risk of not achieving its goals and that $35 billion in taxpayer money is being spent ineffectively in the process.”</blockquote> I've been calling for a "recalibration" (i.e., a cessation of putting the cart before the horse) and slowing down, for years.  See for instance my July 2010 post "Meaningful Use Final Rule: Have the Administration and ONC Put the Cart Before the Horse on Health IT?" and its hyperlinks at <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/07/meaningful-use-final-rule-have.html">http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/07/meaningful-use-final-rule-have.html</a>. <blockquote class="tr_bq">Among the report’s conclusions: <ul><li>Despite expectations of cost savings, the digital systems may be increasing unnecessary medical tests and billings to Medicare.</li><li>The government has not demanded that the various digital systems be able to share medical information, a critical element to their success.</li><li>Few controls exist to prevent fraud and abuse. Many doctors and hospitals are receiving money by simply attesting that they are meeting required standards.</li><li>Procedures to protect the privacy of patient records are “lax and may jeopardize sensitive patient data.”</li><li>It remains unclear whether doctors and hospitals that have accepted stimulus funding will be able to maintain the systems without government money.</li></ul></blockquote> I have as an even larger concern the quality and fitness (and hence safety) of today's health IT systems.  In what may be the first robust study, the findings as I have pointed out on this blog are of great concern: <blockquote class="tr_bq">Health Leaders Media April 5, 2013 <a href="http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/print/TEC-290834/HIT-Errors-Tip-of-the-Iceberg-Says-ECRI" target="_blank">HIT Errors 'Tip of the Iceberg,' Says ECRI </a> Healthcare systems' transitions from paper records to electronic ones are causing harm and in so many serious ways, providers are only now beginning to understand the scope.  [I understood the scope years ago as reflected in my writings - ed.] Computer programs truncated dosage fields, leading to morphine-caused respiratory arrest; lab test and transplant surgery records didn't talk to each other, leading to organ rejection and patient death; and an electronic systems' misinterpretation of the time "midnight" meant an infant received antibiotics one dangerous day too late. These are among the 171 health information technology malfunctions and disconnects that caused or could have caused patient harm in a report to the ECRI Institute's Patient Safety Organization. Thirty-six participating hospitals reported the data under a special voluntary program conducted last year. Karen Zimmer, MD, medical director of the institute, says the reports of so many types of errors and harm got the staff's attention in part because the program captured so many serious errors within just a nine-week project last spring.  [Including 8 injures and 3 possible deaths in just 9 weeks as I wrote at "Peering Underneath the Iceberg's Water Level: AMNews on the New ECRI Deep Dive Study of Health IT Events" <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/peering-underneath-icebergs-water-level.html">here</a> - ed.] The volume of errors in the voluntary reports was she says, "an awareness raiser." "If we're seeing this much under a voluntary reporting program, we know this is just the tip of the iceberg; we know these events are very much underreported." ... ECRI is currently evaluating a similar, and much larger list of reports from many of the 800 hospitals that contract with ECRI's PSO services. </blockquote> The fact that only GOP Senators so far have made this call is perhaps somewhat surprising, considering the abuse that side of the aisle often takes for being pro-business and anti-citizen rights. On the other hand, hospital accidents are a truly non-partisan issue.  A Democrat or Republican (or member of any other poitical party), and their loved ones, are all in the same boat. As this point in time, I recommend any patient have a strong advocate following everything done, not done, supposed to be done, not supposed to be done, med and allergy lists and fulfillment, action on lab and imaging reports, etc. -- importantly, not depending on IT-dependent clinicians to do so. -- SS

Fred Schulte: "GOP senators call for overhaul of electronic health records program"

Fred Schulte, investigative reporter at the Center for Public Integrity (link to bio), has authored a new article worth reading in its entirety:GOP senators call for overhaul of electronic health reco…

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16 Apr 2013

Peering Underneath the Iceberg's Water Level: AMNews on the New ECRI "Deep Dive" Study of Health IT "Events"

FDA's <a href="http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OfficeofMedicalProductsandTobacco/CDRH/default.htm" target="_blank">Center for Devices and Radiological Health</a> director Jeffrey Shuren MD JD voiced the opinion a few years ago that what FDA knows about health IT risks is the "tip of the iceberg" due to systematic impediments to knowledge gathering and diffusion.   See links to source <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/04/fda-decides-regulating-implantable.html" target="_blank">here</a> and to the FDA Internal Memo on HIT risk - labeled "internal document not intended for public use" and unearthed by investigative reporter <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/authors/fred-schulte" target="_blank">Fred Schulte</a> several years ago - <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/Internal-FDA-Report-on-Adverse-Events-Involving-Health-Information-IT.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> (PDF). At my Feb. 9, 2013 post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/ecri-institute-pso-uncovers-health.html" target="_blank">A New ECRI Institute Study On Health Information Technology-Related Events</a>" I opined that a new ECRI study was beginning to peer beneath the waterline of Jeff Shuren's iceberg tip, at what may reside underneath that waterline.  Iceberg tips, needless to say, are usually tiny compared to the iceberg's overall size. Reporter Kevin O'Reilly at AMNews (<a href="http://amednews.com/" target="_blank">amednews.com)</a> has now written about that ECRI report. The results of the report are concerning: <blockquote class="tr_bq"> <a href="http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2013/02/25/prsa0225.htm" target="_blank">Ways EHRs can lead to unintended safety problems</a> Wrong records and failures in data transfer impede physicians and harm patients, according to an analysis of health technology incidents. By Kevin B. O'Reilly, amednews staff, posted Feb. 25, 2013. In spring 2012, a surgeon tried to electronically access a patient’s radiology study in the operating room but the computer would show only a blue screen. The patient’s time under anesthesia was extended while OR staff struggled to get the display to function properly. That is just one example of 171 health information technology-related problems reported during a nine-week period to the ECRI Institute PSO, a patient safety organization in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., that works with health systems and hospital associations in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and elsewhere to analyze and prevent adverse events. Eight of the incidents reported involved patient harm, and three may have contributed to patient deaths, said the institute’s 48-page report, first made privately available to the PSO’s members and partners in December 2012. The report, shared with American Medical News in February, highlights how the health IT systems meant to make care safer and more efficient can sometimes expose patients to harm.</blockquote>  Mar. 1, 2013 addendum.  From ECRI, the denominator is this: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><div class="MsoNormal">Participating facilities submitted health IT related events during the nine-week period starting April 16, 2012, and ending June 19, 2012. ECRI Institute PSO pulled additional health IT events that were submitted by facilities during the same nine-week period as part of their routine process of submitting event reports to ECRI Institute PSO’s reporting program. The PSO Deep Dive analysis consisted of 171 health IT-related events submitted by 36 healthcare facilities, primarily hospitals.   [I note that's 36 of 5,724 hospital in the U.S. per data from the American Hospital Association (<a href="http://www.aha.org/research/rc/stat-studies/fast-facts.shtml" target="_blank">link</a>), or appx. 0.6 %.  A very crude correction factor in extrapolation would be about x 159 on the hospital count issue alone, not including the effects of the voluntary nature of the study, of non-hospital EHR users, etc.  Extrapolating from 9 week to a year, the figure becomes about x 1000.  Accounting for the voluntary nature of the reporting (5% of cases per Koppel), the corrective figure approaches x20,000.  Extrapolation of course would be less crude if # total beds, degree of participant EHR implementation/use, and numerous other factors were known, but the present reported numbers are a cause for concern - ed.] </div></blockquote> Sept. 2013 addendum:  Health Leaders Media has more on the ECRI Deep Dive study at <a href="http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/print/TEC-290834/HIT-Errors-Tip-of-the-Iceberg-Says-ECRI">http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/print/TEC-290834/HIT-Errors-Tip-of-the-Iceberg-Says-ECRI</a>: <blockquote class="tr_bq">HIT Errors 'Tip of the Iceberg,' Says ECRI Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media , April 5, 2013 Healthcare systems' transitions from paper records to electronic ones are causing harm and in so many serious ways, providers are only now beginning to understand the scope. Computer programs truncated dosage fields, leading to morphine-caused respiratory arrest; lab test and transplant surgery records didn't talk to each other, leading to organ rejection and patient death; and an electronic systems' misinterpretation of the time "midnight" meant an infant received antibiotics one dangerous day too late. These are among the 171 health information technology malfunctions and disconnects that caused or could have caused patient harm in a report to the <a href="https://www.ecri.org/Pages/default.aspx" target="_blank">ECRI</a> Institute's Patient Safety Organization. ... The 36 hospitals that participated in the ECRI IT project are among the hospitals around the country for which ECRI serves as a Patient Safety Organization, or PSO. The 171 events documented, break down like this: <ul><li>53% involved a medication management system. <ul><li>25% involved a computerized order entry system</li><li>15% involved an electronic medication administration record</li><li>11% involved pharmacy systems</li><li>2% involved automated dispensing systems</li></ul></li><li>17% were caused by clinical documentation systems</li><li>13% were caused by Lab information systems</li><li>9% were caused by computers not functioning</li><li>8%. Were caused by radiology or diagnostic imaging systems, including PACS</li><li>1% were caused by clinical decision support systems</li></ul> Karen Zimmer, MD, medical director of the institute, says the reports of so many types of errors and harm got the staff's attention in part because the program captured so many serious errors within just a nine-week project last spring.  The volume of errors in the voluntary reports was she says, "an awareness raiser." "If we're seeing this much under a voluntary reporting program, we know this is just the tip of the iceberg; we know these events are very much underreported."</blockquote> As at the opening of this post, "tip of the iceberg" is a phrase also used by FDA CDRH director Jeffrey Shuren MD JD regarding safety issues with EHRs and other health IT. Along those lines, at my April 2010 post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/04/if-benefits-of-hit-can-be-guesstimated.html" target="_blank">If The Benefits Of Healthcare IT Can Be Guesstimated, So Can And Should The Dangers</a>" I proposed a "thought experiment" to theoretically extrapolate limited data on health IT risk to a national audience, taking into account factors that limited transparency and thus reduced known injury and fatality counts. The results were undesirable, to say the least - but it was a thought experiment only. Using the current data, coming from a limited, voluntary set of information over 9 weeks, I opine that the results of an extrapolation to a national (or worldwide) level, in an environment of rapidly increasing adopters (many of whom are new to the technology), on an annual basis, not a mere 9 weeks - would not look pretty. <blockquote class="tr_bq">The institute’s report did not rate whether electronic systems were any less safe than the paper records they replaced. The report is intended to alert hospitals and health systems to the unintended consequences of electronic health records. </blockquote> Ethically, this is really not relevant towards national rollout, especially with penalties beginning to accrue to non-adopters of HHS "Certified" technology in a few years. As I've written on this blog, medical ethics generally do not condone experimentation without informed consent, especially when the experimental devices are of unknown risk. Not knowing the risks of IT, it really doesn't matter, ethically, what the safety of paper is.  "Hope" is not a valid reason for medical experimentation.  (See below for what a PubMed search reveals about risks of paper records.) The unspoken truth prevalent in healthcare today seems to be this:  the sacrifice of individual patients to a technology of unknown risk is OK, as long as - we hope -  it advances the greater good.    Perhaps that should be explicitly admitted by the HIT industry's <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/02/health-it-ddulites-and-disregard-for.html" target="_blank">hyper-enthusiast proponents</a> who ignore the downsides, so the spin can be dropped and there can be clarity? <blockquote class="tr_bq">The leading cause of problems was general malfunctions [also known by the benign-sounding euphemism "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/glitch" target="_blank">glitches</a>" - ed.]  responsible for 29% of incidents. For example, following a consultation about a patient’s wounds, a nurse at one hospital tried to enter instructions in the electronic record, but the system would not allow the nurse to type more than five characters in the comment field. Other times, medication label scanning functions failed, or an error message was incorrectly displayed every time a particular drug was ordered. One system failed to issue an alert when a pregnancy test was ordered for a male patient. [These 'general malfunctions' are thus not just computer bugs undetected due to inadequate pre-rollout testing, but also examples of design flaws due to designer-programmer-seller-buyer-implementer lack of due diligence, i.e.,  negligence - ed.] A quarter of incidents were related to data output problems, such as retrieving the wrong patient record because the system does not ask the user to validate the patient identity before proceeding. This kind of problem led to incorrect medication orders and in one case an unnecessary chest x-ray. Twenty-four percent of incidents were linked to data-input mistakes. For example, one nurse recorded blood glucose results for the wrong patient due to typing the incorrect patient identification number to access the record.  [Many of these are likely due to what NIST has termed "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/10/nist-on-ehr-mission-hostile-user.html" target="_blank">use error</a>" - user interface designs that will engender users to make errors of commission or omission - as opposed to "user error" i.e., carelessness - ed.] Most of remaining event reports were related to data-transfer failures, such as a case where a physician’s order to stop anticoagulant medication did not properly transfer to the pharmacy system. The patient received eight extra doses of the medication before it was stopped. [Due to outright software, hardware and/or network problems and defects - ed.]</blockquote> I've been writing about such issues since 1998, not because I imagined them.  As a CMIO I saw them firsthand; as teacher and mentor I heard about them from colleagues; as a writer I heard about them via (usually unsolicited) emails from concerned clinicians; as an independent expert witness on health IT harms I've heard about them from Plaintiff's attorneys, but not from the Defense side of the Bar as yet.  Of course the reasons for that are understandable -  albeit disappointing. In fact, robust studies of a serious issue - the actual risks of paper towards harm causation - and further, whether any of the issues are remediable without spending hundreds of billions of dollars on IT - seem scarce.  I've asked the PA Patient Safety Authority about the possibility of using data in the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) database, just as they did for EHR-related medical events, to determine incidence of paper-related medical events.  They are pondering the issue. As an aside, I note that it would be ironic if the relative risks of both IT and paper were not really robustly known.  (I note that in a PubMed search on "<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=risks+of+paper+medical+records" target="_blank">risks of paper medical records</a>", not much jumps out.)  IT hyper-enthusiasts will not even debate the issue of studying whether a good paper system might be safer for patients in some clinical environments than bad health IT. Considering the tremendous cost and unknown risk of today's health IT (and perhaps the unknown risk of paper, too), would it not make more sense, and be consistent with the medical Oath, to leave paper in place where it is currently used - and perhaps improve its performance - until we "get the IT right" in controlled, sequestered environments, prior to national rollout? In other words, as I've asked before on these pages, should we not slow down the IT push and adhere to traditional (and hard-learned) cautions on medical research? Even asking such questions brings forth logical fallacies such as straw arguments (e.g., UCSF's <a href="http://community.the-hospitalist.org/" target="_blank">Bob Wachter</a> in a recent discussion I initiated with several investigative reporters: "...where we part ways is your defense of paper and pencil. I understand advocacy, and you have every right to bang this particular drum"), ad hominem attacks, etc. <blockquote class="tr_bq">... It is not enough for physicians and other health care leaders to shop carefully for IT systems, the report said. Ensuring that systems such as computerized physician order entry and electronic health records work safely has to be a continuing concern, said Karen P. Zimmer, MD, MPH, medical director of the ECRI Institute PSO. “Minimizing the unintended consequences of health IT systems and maximizing the potential of health IT to improve patient safety should be an ongoing focus of every health care organization,” she said.</blockquote> I recommended that clinicians take matters into their own hands if their leaders do not, as at the bottom of my post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/03/doctors-and-ehrs-reframing-modernists-v.html" target="_blank">here</a>.  This advice bears repeating: <blockquote class="tr_bq">... When a physician or other clinician observes health IT problems, defects, malfunctions, <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/hostileuserexper">mission hostility</a> (e.g., poor user interfaces), significant downtimes, lost data, erroneous data, misidentified data, and so forth ... and most certainly, patient 'close calls' or actual injuries ... they should (anonymously if necessary if in a hostile management setting): (DISCLAIMER:  I am not responsible for any adverse outcomes if any organizational policies or existing laws are broken in doing any of the following.) <ul><li>Inform their facility's senior management, if deemed safe and not likely to result in retaliation such as being slandered as a "<a href="http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/huntoon.pdf">disruptive physician</a>" and/or or being subjected to sham peer review (<a href="http://www.aapsonline.org/index.php/article/sham_peer_review_resources_physicians/">link</a>).</li></ul><ul><li>Inform their personal and organizational insurance carriers, in writing. Insurance carriers do not enjoy paying out for preventable IT-related medical mistakes. They have begun to become aware of HIT risks. See, for example, the essay on Norcal Mutual Insurance Company's newsletter on HIT risks<a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=norcal"> at this link</a>. (Note - many medical malpractice insurance policies can be interpreted as requiring this reporting, observed occasional guest blogger <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/Dr.%20Scott%20Monteith">Dr. Scott Monteith</a> in a comment to me about this post.)</li></ul><ul><li>Inform the Joint Commission (or similar national accreditor of hospital safety if not in the U.S.) via their complaint site at <a href="http://www.jointcommission.org/report_a_complaint.aspx">http://www.jointcommission.org/report_a_complaint.aspx</a> . Also consider writing the JC senior officers (<a href="http://www.jointcommission.org/about_us/joint_commission_officers.aspx">link to officer's list</a>), whose awareness of HIT issues I can personally attest to via our correspondences.</li></ul><ul><li>Inform the FDA (or similar healthcare regulator if not in the U.S.) via the FDA Medwatch Form 3500 reporting site at <a href="https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/medwatch-online.htm">https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/medwatch/medwatch-online.htm</a>. An example of such an adverse event report I filed myself (when the involved hospital refused) is <a href="http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfmaude/Detail.CFM?MDRFOI__ID=1729552">at this link</a> in the FDA MAUDE (Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience) database.</li></ul><ul><li>Inform the State Medical Society and local Medical Society of your locale.</li></ul><ul><li>Inform the appropriate Board of Health for your locale.</li></ul><ul><li>If applicable (and it often is), inform the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) of your state or region. Example: in Pennsylvania, the QIO is "<a href="http://www.qipa.org/Home.aspx">Quality Insights of PA</a>."</li></ul><ul><li>Inform a personal attorney.</li></ul><ul><li>Inform local, state and national representatives such as congressional representatives. Sen. Grassley of Iowa is aware of these issues, for example.</li></ul><ul><li>As clinicians are often forced to use health IT, at their own risk even when "certified" (<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/02/hospitals-and-doctors-use-health-it-at.html">link</a>), if a healthcare organization or HIT seller is sluggish or resistant in taking corrective actions, consider taking another risk (perhaps this is for the very daring or those near the end of their clinical career). Present your organization's management with a statement for them to sign to the effect of:</li></ul><blockquote>"We, the undersigned, do hereby acknowledge the concerns of [Dr. Jones] about care quality issues at [Mount St. Elsewhere Hospital] regarding EHR difficulties that were reported, namely [event A, event B, event C ... etc.] We hereby indemnify [Dr. Jones] for malpractice liability regarding patient care errors that occur due to EHR issues beyond his/her control, but within the control of hospital management, including but not limited to: [system downtimes, lost orders, missing or erroneous data, etc.] that are known to pose risk to patients. We assume responsibility for any such malpractice. With regard to health IT and its potential negative effects on care, Dr. Jones has provided us with the Joint Commission Sentinel Events Alert on Health IT at <a href="http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/SEA_42.PDF" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/SEA_42.PDF</a>, the IOM report on HIT safety at <a href="http://www.modernhealthcare.com/Assets/pdf/CH76254118.PDF" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.modernhealthcare.com/Assets/pdf/CH76254118.PDF</a>, and the FDA Internal Memorandum on H-IT Safety Issues at <a href="http://www.scribd.com/huffpostfund/d/33754943-Internal-FDA-Report-on-Adverse-Events-Involving-Health-Information-Technology" style="font-style: italic;">http://www.scribd.com/huffpostfund/d/33754943-Internal-FDA-Report-on-Adverse-Events-Involving-Health-Information-Technology</a>. CMO __________ (date, time) CIO ___________ (date, time) CMIO _________ (date, time) General Counsel ___________ (date, time) etc."</blockquote><ul><li>If the hospital or organizational management refuses to sign such a waiver (and they likely will!), note the refusal, with date and time of refusal, and file away with your attorney. It could come in handy if EHR-related med mal does occur.</li></ul><ul><li>As EHRs remain experimental, I note that indemnifications such as the above probably belong in medical staff contracts and bylaws when EHR use is coerced.</li></ul></blockquote> These recommendations still stand, although after this recent story, my caution about retaliation should be re-emphasized: <blockquote class="tr_bq">The Advisory Board Company Feb. 14, 2013 <a href="http://www.advisory.com/Daily-Briefing/2013/02/15/Jury-Hospital-CEO-framed-physician-by-planting-gun" target="_blank">Hospital Framed Physician; Planted a Gun </a></blockquote> -- SS

Peering Underneath the Iceberg's Water Level: AMNews on the New ECRI "Deep Dive" Study of Health IT "Events"

FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health director Jeffrey Shuren MD JD voiced the opinion a few years ago that what FDA knows about health IT risks is the "tip of the iceberg" due to systemati…

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28 Feb 2013

New York Times: "A Digital Shift on Health Data Swells Profits in an Industry"

The New York Times has published an article today by Julie Creswell entitled "A Digital Shift on Health Data Swells Profits in an Industry."  It is available <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/a-digital-shift-on-health-data-swells-profits.html" target="_blank">at this link</a>. <blockquote class="tr_bq"><div itemprop="articleBody">... While proponents say new record-keeping technologies will one day reduce costs and improve care [only when today's bad health IT is abolished - see <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/" target="_blank">here</a> - ed.], profits and sales are soaring now across the records industry. At Allscripts, annual sales have more than doubled from $548 million in 2009 to an estimated $1.44 billion last year, partly reflecting daring acquisitions made on the bet that the legislation would be a boon for the industry. At the <a class="meta-org" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/cerner-corporation/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More information about Cerner Corporation">Cerner Corporation</a> of Kansas City, Mo., sales rose 60 percent during that period. With money pouring in, top executives are enjoying Wall Street-style paydays. </div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div><div itemprop="articleBody">None of that would have happened without the health records legislation that was included in the 2009 economic stimulus bill — and the lobbying that helped produce it. Along the way, the records industry made hundreds of thousands of dollars of political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans. In some cases, the ties went deeper. Glen E. Tullman, until recently the chief executive of Allscripts, was health technology adviser to the 2008 Obama campaign. As C.E.O. of Allscripts, he visited the White House no fewer than seven times after President Obama took office in 2009, according to White House records. </div></blockquote> The article does not reveal anything that readers of this blog did not know already. The push for the financial incentives and profits were also written about at the The Huffington Post Investigative Fund by investigative reporter Fred Schulte, now at the Center for Public Integrity ("<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/05/stimulus-fuels-gold-rush_n_347311.html" target="_blank">Stimulus Fuels Gold Rush For Electronic Health Systems</a>"), and in the Washington Post by Robert O'Harrow Jr. (which I wrote about at this post:  <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/05/machinery-behind-healthcare-reform-how.html" target="_blank">The Machinery Behind Healthcare Reform: How the HIT Lobby is Pushing Experimental and Unsafe Technology on Unconsented Patients and Clinicians</a>). Rather than re-hash the issues, I wanted to focus on some of the current NYT reader comments: <blockquote class="tr_bq">... After a visit to a Florida hospital for suspicion of heart attack, I asked for a copy of my records to give my home (IL) physician. I was shocked to read that I had had "anal surgery." When I reviewed these records with my doctor, she told me that I had probably told the admitting ER nurse I had recently had a colonoscopy, so the closest coding information their electronic system allowed was anal surgery. So, how can these inaccuracies which will live on forever electronically be helpful toward patient care? The old acronym GIGO certainly applies here--garbage in; garbage out. ... This article highlights only one aspect of the "Failed Promise of Electronic Health Records". Through lobbying but also supported by a study from the RAND organization, the three final 2008 presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama outbid each other with promises to spend billions to entice doctors to use electronic record systems. Unfortunately, because of unsolved documentation problems, such systems are often disliked and slow the process. Instead of creating interoperability, electronic medical record systems (EMRs) with limited functionality and benefits were created. In particular, true interoperability has been neglected and attempts to create it through networks in the form of CHINs, RHIOs, and HIEs have failed. ... Mr. Tullman's comment is priceless. “I think it’s very common with every administration that when they want to talk about the automotive industry, they convene automotive executives, and when they want to talk about the Internet, they convene Internet executives." Of course, when "they" want to radically alter the way doctors do their jobs, "they" talk to academics, lawyers, publicly traded insurance CEOs and internet executives. Today's diatribe about quality care being more important than quantity care is laugh out loud funny. Unless you're a physician. Only in America does getting paid less and less, with more clerical data entry record-keeping at every step just to get paid and protect against lawsuit, translate into an incentive to provide quality care. Somebody prescribe a dose of common sense. Oops. Too late. ... Every person needs a national health ID with up to date health information. To say that the current EMR systems are problematic would be an understatement. They take away face time with patients, the M.D.'s talents and time are wasted doing data entry and worst of all ,they are potentially dangerously flawed. An example is a recent patient I saw who was treated by a number of physicians. His medications had required significant changes which were done by 2 different M.D.'s from his main doctor. Both gave him computer generated lists from the same system. Both had a mixture of unmatching generic and proprietary names, the patient's actual medicines from the pharmacy had a mixture and different doses from the Dr.'s orders. He was trying to set up his week's supply. But didn't know which proprietary name went with which medicine. These systems should have been tried out on a small scale and approved by M.D.'s before this became law. The VA system which is time tested, physician friendly and free only the VA is using. These other systems are set up to maximize profits for the IT companies, cost the physicians huge amounts to install, cost the hospitals huge amounts esp when they are changing from one system to another due to problems when they were advertised to maximize hospital billing. This another example of our distorted legislative process where profits and politics take precedence over people. ... I am a dermatologist in private practice who teaches at a local medical school part time. Electronic records are problematic. Every doctor I know feels they take time away from being a doctor. I literally don't know a single colleague who feels their benefits are worth the extra time involved. In medical school, we learned how to record notes in medical records so that patient care is improved from visit to visit. In short, we use notes from the previous visits to assist in our decisions in subsequent examinations. In today's digital world, most doctors I know are forced to change their notation style to justify payments from insurance companies. The more detailed the note in the medical record, the lower the chance that an insurance company downgrades the fee charged to the patient. Thus, notes are now longer and more detailed than they were ten years ago. The problem with such notes is that they are filled with detritus geared to prevent payment reduction rather than aimed at improving continuity of patient care from visit to visit. The impact of this adoption of electronic medical records is that insurance company computer systems can easily sift through notes to reduce compensation to doctors who spend more time with patients and who write cleaner, more efficient notes. ... I still use pen and paper.  One requirement would fix this mess: interoperability No, NOT the "industry supported" standard. Thats a joke. Industry wants NO inter-operability because they want to lock us in to a an individual product, The government has a great EMR (the VA system). All commercial ones should be forced to be able to export data in a way that is 100% compatible with that. As such, they would then be 100% compatible with each other. Some of my colleagues are now on their third EMR product in 7 years. Why? Big company buys company B and then stops supporting it. The doctor is forced to switch to Big Company's new product. Of course the data does not transfer over so the doctor has to go through the crude data-entry mess all over. ... The folly of relying only on digital records. Without constant and costly software and hardware upgrades, your digital medical records will be rendered obsolete. Could be a matter of years or decades, but it will happen. Not only that, digital proprietary systems are at huge risk if the private for-profit company goes bankrupt. Paper records can last 1000 years. ... Another scam. Very expensive and involved for end user:ie doctor. Have had to hire an IT company to assist, have to pay annually for service contract, upgrades and what the article didn't mention was the "meaningful use" criteria that all doctors have to comply with in order to pass government inspection for a rebate. The software vendors, labs, and others are charging doctors extra for software upgrades and abilities to comply with each "meaningful use" component . This is already costing more money and aggravation than the worth of the government rebate. Who will subsidize this? Doctors are starting to lose interest. We know this is another corrupt government sponsored ploy and only the tip of the iceberg. If the government were to have spent the 19 billion with a consortium of vendors such as google apple and microsoft, the goal of free software provision capable of interexchangeable data would likely have been completed with all providers on board. ... Common sense can tell you that the real value of these systems is marginal. Much of medical treatment is "incident specific" where history is not necessary. Most PCP's already have a system that works. In larger systems and for complex diseases, perhaps EMR are beneficial but not for routine care. As has been noted, all sorts of problems arise with EMR's: destruction of MD-pt relationship, incorrect data being entered and never removed, cumbersome and expensive requirements of instituting and maintaining the system, etc. It is awful that physicians and patients are "used" in the service of politicians and EMR execs. ... As a practicing physician I have to struggle everyday with the Citrix and Quickbase electronic records. The Electronics Medical Records industry has been getting the gold promised by the government in exchange of a very poor and deficient product. The EMR industry has been selling to the healthcare providers, in need of electronic records, the equivalent of the Formaldehyde-contaminated trailer homes sold to FEMA for the Katrina homeless.</blockquote> These are just from the first page of comments.  Read the article and the comments at the link above. My observation is that it seems that as transparency increases, the public "gets it" that these systems are not the panacea the industry wants us to believe, and may impede the clinicians trying to treat them. Now, when will the government "get it" that they've been had? -- SS Addendum:  another "anecdote" just caught my eye because it sings an unfortunate familiar tune to me: <blockquote class="tr_bq">So much data, so little knowledge. My best friend's father just died because none of his who-knows-how-many physicians took the time to actually read and anaylze the reams of info they were dutifully inputting. They killed him with an overdose of one drug and not enough of another.  Useful data collection and analysis is one thing, but what we seem to have now is just institutionalized hoarding. More data doesn't make anyone safer (except the data companies), just like stacks of old magazines or cans of beans makes one safer. More is NOT better; it is just more. More time and more expense wasted on stuff and less spent on actual health care. You've got to USE anything or it is just more useless and potentially dangerous stuff. </blockquote> -- SS

New York Times: "A Digital Shift on Health Data Swells Profits in an Industry"

The New York Times has published an article today by Julie Creswell entitled "A Digital Shift on Health Data Swells Profits in an Industry." It is available at this link.... While proponents say new …

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20 Feb 2013

Fred Schulte on Investigative Journalism: "Race to electronic health records may come with a price"

Investigative reporter Fred Schulte of the <a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/" target="_blank">Center for Public Integrity</a> has written up his experiences on his investigation of upcoding and Medicare billing inflation due to the effects of EHRs. The piece is of interest in regard to, at the very least, the personal recollections of how an investigation comes to be and is conducted. I thought his piece would be of interest to HC Renewal readers.  It is at the site of the American Association of Healthcare Journalists and entitled "<a href="http://healthjournalism.org/resources-articles-details.php?id=249#.UMIeIqyI5eA" target="_blank">Race to electronic health records may come with a price</a>." (The result of the investigation is the series entitled "<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/health/medicare/cracking-codes" target="_blank">Cracking the Codes</a>.) <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiAzvhRF-BIaHTtPu5qyez6X2_Yz0E5DLqEO3Rui7IAuwl0B0MtUTgJoT-yKJ-3wp-zkZFbz9VAzT8Ci9g1DS6E6hvNxXnM5h0Xy2M1tkELSOU7Lw9v5aBh9AsfKGsciNOiGYbv4E1xCSa/s1600/fred-schulte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiAzvhRF-BIaHTtPu5qyez6X2_Yz0E5DLqEO3Rui7IAuwl0B0MtUTgJoT-yKJ-3wp-zkZFbz9VAzT8Ci9g1DS6E6hvNxXnM5h0Xy2M1tkELSOU7Lw9v5aBh9AsfKGsciNOiGYbv4E1xCSa/s1600/fred-schulte.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fred Schulte</td></tr></tbody></table> This work contributed substantially and materially to a reluctant HHS and ONC deciding it was time to actually investigate the issue. (Perhaps sometime soon HHS and ONC may also seriously investigate health IT safety, and take more than Milquetoast action.) -- SS

Fred Schulte on Investigative Journalism: "Race to electronic health records may come with a price"

Investigative reporter Fred Schulte of the Center for Public Integrity has written up his experiences on his investigation of upcoding and Medicare billing inflation due to the effects of EHRs.The pie…

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07 Dec 2012

Cybernetik Über Alles Again: HHS and Sebelius - Hospitals And Their Computers Have More Rights Than Patients

A Nov. 29, 2012 New York Times article by Reed Abelson entitled "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/business/medicare-is-faulted-in-electronic-medical-records-conversion.html" target="_blank">Medicare Is Faulted on Shift to Electronic Records</a>" observes that: <blockquote class="tr_bq">The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of the Obama administration’s plan for health care reform — is “vulnerable” to fraud and abuse because of the failure of Medicare officials to develop appropriate safeguards, according to a sharply critical report to be issued Thursday by federal investigators [the report from HHS OIG is <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-05-11-00250.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> - ed.] ... Medicare, which is charged with managing the incentive program that encourages the adoption of electronic records, has failed to put in place adequate safeguards to ensure that information being provided by hospitals and doctors about their electronic records systems is accurate. To qualify for the incentive payments, doctors and hospitals must demonstrate that the systems lead to better patient care, meeting a so-called meaningful use standard by, for example, checking for harmful drug interactions. [I note that meeting EHR "meaningful use" standards does not necessarily signify better care; the "standards" are experimental - ed.]</blockquote> Hospitals and doctors are lying about their EHR efforts, in order to gain incentive payments, it seems. In an article "<a href="http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/11/29/11865/medicare-paid-36-billion-electronic-health-records-didnt-verify-quality-goals-were" target="_blank">IG says program is 'vulnerable' to abuse, better oversight needed</a>", Fred Schulte at the Center for Public Integrity notes: <blockquote class="tr_bq">... the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has since paid out more than $3.6 billion to medical professionals who made the switch without verifying they are meeting the required quality goals, according to a new federal <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-05-11-00250.pdf">audit</a> to be released today </blockquote> Observes the CEO of the American Health Information Management Association: <blockquote class="tr_bq"> “We’ve gone from the horse and buggy to the Model T, and we don’t know the rules of the road. Now we’ve had a big car pileup,” said Lynne Thomas Gordon, the chief executive of the American Health Information Management Association, a trade group in Chicago.  </blockquote> More Horse and Buggy than Model T.  At least the Model T was reasonably dependable.  Also mentioned is this: <blockquote class="tr_bq"><div itemprop="articleBody">House Republicans echoed these concerns in early October <a href="http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hhs_ehr_mu2_final.pdf" title="The letter to Ms. Sebelius.">in a letter</a> to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services. Citing the Times article, they called for suspending the incentive program until concerns about standardization had been resolved. “The top House policy makers on health care are concerned that H.H.S. is squandering taxpayer dollars by asking little of providers in return for incentive payments,” said a statement issued at the same time by the Republicans, who are likely to seize on the latest inspector general report as further evidence of lax oversight. Republicans have said they will continue to monitor the program.</div><div itemprop="articleBody"> </div>In her letter in response, which has not been made public, Ms. Sebelius dismissed the idea of suspending the incentive program, arguing that it “would be profoundly unfair to the hospitals and eligible professionals that have invested billions of dollars and devoted countless hours of work to purchase and install systems and educate staff.”</blockquote> I was taught "first, do no harm."  Fairness to patients injured and killed by this technology in its present "Horse and Buggy" state (<a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/" target="_blank">buggy</a> being a particularly apropos term) seems not a matter of particularly high concern to HHS.   A suspension of incentives would slow the adoption rate down, necessary in order to "get the bugs" out of the technology before mass deployment and develop safety, validation and surveillance standards (currently non-existent), as I wrote in my Oct. 24, 2012 "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/10/letter-to-us-senators-and.html" target="_blank">Letter To U.S. Senators and Representatives Who've Sought HHS Input On EHR Problems</a>." This is despite the fact that FDA, IOM and others have indicated the level of harm is not known, due to systematic impediments to diffusion of that knowledge (see IOM statements in the midsection of my post on health information technology hyper-enthusiasm <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/03/doctors-and-ehrs-reframing-modernists-v.html" target="_blank">at this link</a>, and an internal FDA memo on HIT safety <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/smoking-gun-internal-fda-memorandum-of.html" target="_blank">at this link</a>).  HHS seems to care not about health and human services, or at best to be severely misguided.  "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/10/cybernetik-uber-alles-computers-have.html" target="_blank">Cybernetik Über Alles</a>" seems their current credo. -- SS

Cybernetik Über Alles Again: HHS and Sebelius - Hospitals And Their Computers Have More Rights Than Patients

A Nov. 29, 2012 New York Times article by Reed Abelson entitled "Medicare Is Faulted on Shift to Electronic Records" observes that:The conversion to electronic medical records — a critical piece of th…

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29 Nov 2012

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