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Health IT: "Danger"

In an article simply entitled "Danger", Health Data Management author Elizabeth Gardner spells out some "inconvenient truths" about health IT. Many of the contributors have opined on the risks associated with health IT; several are newly contrite about this issue: <blockquote><a href="http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/issues/18_8/danger-ehr-safety-errors-40754-1.html">Danger</a> By Elizabeth Gardner Health Data Management Magazine, 08/01/2010 Even to Ross Koppel, electronic health records are better than paper ones, "or cuneiform tablets, smoke signals, or carrier pigeons," he adds. He prefers to use hospitals and doctors that have EHRs. But the University of Pennsylvania sociologist specializes in analyzing interactions between medical computer systems and the people who use them, and he's found enough problems to turn him into an industry gadfly on the potential dangers of EHRs. "A resident will get an alert at 50 [milligrams of a certain drug] at one hospital, 60 at a second hospital, and no alert at a third hospital because they turned it off," Koppel says. "So he thinks the 70 milligrams he's ordered there are safe. The residents don't know whether the alerts are on or off. They're not familiar with many medications and they start a new rotation every thirty days. They use these alerts as safety bumpers and that's not safe." ... Koppel has found plenty of other glitches, from outright programming errors to user interfaces that make life difficult for clinicians. Numerical values appear in an order that makes sense to the computer but looks random to a human; positive test results aren't always flagged for review; weights aren't consistently labeled as pounds or kilograms (which can lead to babies, for example, being given twice, or half, the medication they need). "Everyone focuses on why physicians are resistant to computers, but I would rather focus on how difficult the systems are to use," Koppel says. "Most physicians are the smartest guys in the room. Their resistance to technology as such is zero, but they resist software that has a clunky structure."</blockquote> Dr. Koppel, a sociologist, is a well recognized name in health IT critical thinking circles. He will not win any favors from the health IT vendors and CIO's for that comment about physicians and smartness, but he is quite correct. Physicians are not Luddites. They readily adapt new technology proven as good for patients. In fact, in my observations IT personnel are the true Luddites, clinging to inappropriate, rigid business-IT views on the healthcare IT development and implementation process (vs. more appropriate and modern <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming">agile methodologies</a>), holding unshakable, stereotypical views about physicians, and remaining unreasonably obstinate on clinician complaints about "clunky" health IT user experiences. <blockquote>Every year the ECRI Institute, Plymouth Meeting, Pa., a not-for-profit organization that evaluates health technology, issues a top 10 list of technology hazards in medical care. "Problems with computerized equipment and systems" ranked seventh this year, right behind "needlesticks and other sharps injuries" and ahead of "surgical stapler hazards." Most of the incidents reported to ECRI by its 5,000 members (hospitals, health systems, payers, and other interested parties) were due to convergence of computers and medical devices in areas like medication management and the routing of device alarms to clinicians' cell phones and pagers. (ECRI Institute points out that such problems are "most certainly underreported.")</blockquote> Under-reporting of health IT hazards is a familiar theme to this author, as in a 2009 paper entitled "<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/28747771/Remediating-an-Unintended-Consequence-of-Healthcare-IT-A-Dearth-of-Data-on-Unintended-Consequences-of-Healthcare-IT">Remediating an Unintended Consequence of Healthcare IT: A Dearth of Data on Unintended Consequences of Healthcare IT</a>" that was not published due to first-round reviews. Some of those reviews were legitimate and constructive regarding revision, but others appeared to suggest the topic was verboten (for example, "nothing is in this paper that could not be read in any big city newspaper", rather the oxymoron considering the paper's topic). I did not bother with a revision, simply making the paper public and bypassing the peer review censorship I saw coming. <blockquote>But EHRs can easily cause errors, too. Plenty of experts believe that too many systems are being installed too fast into environments too complex to be easily computerized. In the frenzy to be eligible for federal EHR meaningful use incentive payments, and avoid reimbursement penalties starting in 2015, institutions may be setting themselves up for disastrous computer-induced medical errors.</blockquote> The theme of "too fast" has been present in my writings for awhile now; see for example my 2008 posts "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/11/should-us-call-moratorium-on-ambitious.html">Should The U.S. Call A Moratorium On Ambitious National Electronic Health Records Plans</a>?" and "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2008/12/open-letter-to-president-barack-obama.html">Open Letter to President Barack Obama on Healthcare Information Technology</a>". <blockquote>"I'm one of the biggest believers [in EHRs], but there's tremendous pressure to implement these systems so fast," says medical informaticist Dean Sittig, associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and a leading researcher on successes and failures of EHR implementations. "It worries me that people won't have adequate time to come to grips with what they're doing and test their systems properly."</blockquote> Dr. Sittig did write some excellent, pioneering articles on the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579195/pdf/procascamc00009-0785.pdf">indispensibility of the CMIO role ("information architect" - PDF)</a> back in the mid-1990's that I use in my teaching. However, a few years ago he told a former student of mine (he was unaware of that relationship) who listed me as a reference on her CV to not do so, as I was not a "real medical informaticist" or words to that effect. Seems at the time he may have taken issue with my realist views on the problems with health IT. <blockquote>The medical environment is more complex than other fields like aircraft navigation, which is already hard enough to computerize, notes Nancy Leveson, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She's a pioneer in software safety ... "We're talking about a professional environment of doctors, and changing the way they do business," Leveson says. "Most other kinds of automation aren't doing that. </blockquote> This issue is critical and at the root of health IT dysfunction. No other profession is being asked to use IT in the manner in which clinicians have been asked. No other profession may have an information model as complex that they're asked to record in painstaking, granular detail, either. <blockquote> Because software engineers aren't taught about usability and the impact of their systems on the world, they think they'll just automate it the way they want and make people do it their way. There's a lot of stuff out there [in health care] that's very difficult to use. The industry is naive about introducing software and the change it requires and the potential hazards it introduces, and they think it's going to be all right."</blockquote> I would replace the word "naive" with "willfully ignorant, complacent and negligent." There are simply no acceptable excuses for a field that has been in existence for decades to be as toddlers on the impact of their work. <blockquote>... Clinicians who already have extensive experience with EHRs are under no illusions that everything works smoothly. "It's inevitable that some new errors will be introduced [with EHRs]," says David Bates, M.D., chief of general medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, a patient safety expert, and a member of the information technology executive committee of Partners HealthCare, Brigham's parent. </blockquote> Considering the ice-cold reception by most of those clinician experts (e.g., in the medical informatics community) to my writings on HIT problems that began in 1999 and now reside at my Drexel site <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/">here</a>, and to the similar writings of others, I disagree with Bates' assessment. I think the experts have now painted themselves into a corner and have been forced by reality and their own willful blindness into admitting the truth about this experimental technology. (A <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez">PubMed</a> search on "Bates DW" is not generally revealing of papers on health IT risks until relatively recently.) <blockquote>"The key thing is to devote enough resources and attention to fixing them [errors] after they happen. Your EHR may prevent 10 errors for every new one it causes [not sure where these figures come from or if they're generalizable at all - ed.], but you have to have an approach for dealing with the new ones."</blockquote> Again, I would differ. The key thing is to prevent them from happening as much as possible. The pharma and medical device industries do this through RCT's, post market studies, and strong regulatory requirements for their products' manufacture and use. Bates is not an advocate of regulation of health IT. As in my post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/07/health-care-information-technology.html">JAMA letter: Health Care Information Technology, Hospital Responsibilities, and Joint Commission Standards"</a>, in 2009 Bates signed on to an unpublished letter to JAMA (archived <a href="http://www.evernote.com/pub/poikonen/PublicPharmacoinformatics#n=582cbf46-d342-46bc-a39e-3d57e3a31388">here</a>) in response to Koppel and Kreda's article on "hold harmless" clauses that stated "... the belief that the best approach to increase the safety and effectiveness of EHR systems is by legal regulation of system vendors is misplaced." (Incidentally, the letter that JAMA did publish was <a href="http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/302/4/382">mine</a>.) <div></div> <blockquote>... Partners has been developing its own in-house EHR for several decades, and still encounters things that need fixing. For example, when physician order entry was introduced, the system made it possible to order fatally large doses of intravenous potassium, because the initial order choices hadn't been properly vetted by the internal team responsible. The nurses who executed the orders knew enough to catch the error before it harmed a patient, but Bates says it took a year and a half to get the screen corrected in the order entry system.</blockquote> I can add that taking a year and a half to correct a potential fatality-causing screen in a home-built clinical IT application is not just a technological issue, but also an organizational, political and leadership issue. <blockquote> ... "Emergency care is by definition nonlinear and unpredictable, and information technology tends to enforce a certain amount of linearity: you can't do step 5 until you've done steps 1 through 4," says Wears. Emergency room personnel often care for multiple patients simultaneously and have to do things "out of order" so they can be more efficient. If an EHR enforces a linear pattern, it will just get in their way, and they'll compensate by running a parallel system on paper and putting information into the EHR later. "That subverts one of the fundamental things you wanted the system to do-give you real-time feedback on good and bad ideas," Wears says.</blockquote> The realities of the ED cannot be neatly dealt with as if a calm, solitary office environment . <blockquote>There's plenty of blame to go around. Koppel and Leveson say software design, or lack of it, is a common culprit, and they take vendors to task for not focusing on usability.</blockquote> Again, there is no reasonable excuse for IT intractability in a mission critical sector. <blockquote> Leveson says part of the problem is a lack of regulatory standards. "The FDA doesn't want to oversee anything and that's a mistake," she says. "So it's become this free-for-all in the industry."</blockquote> I've used that same language. In my 2009 post <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/08/e-health-hazards-provider-liability-and.html">E-Health Hazards: Provider Liability and Electronic Health Record Systems</a> I wrote "the unregulated free-for-all that has been the health IT marketplace, with dangerous and even <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=clinical%20computing%20problems%20in%20ICU">outrageous practices</a> I noted starting a decade ago, must come to an end as the market matures and as diffusion of this technology massively increases per the government mandates now in effect." <blockquote>Though experts say EHRs clearly fall under the category of medical devices, the FDA has steered clear of directly regulating them. Its ill-starred policy of requiring pre-market approval for blood-bank software, begun back in the 1990s, resulted in major vendors pulling out of the market altogether and stifling innovation ... "That kind of regulation provides a huge economic disincentive and there hasn't been any substantial improvement in blood bank software in 10 years," says Geisinger's Walker. "If the FDA required it for EHRs, it would harm patients more than help."</blockquote> I disagree with Walker and especially disagree with the latter statement, based on one anecdotal case of IT regulation (ironically, it's HIT proponents who most often claim that 'anecdotes' of patient harm don't make data). Further, the FDA was called in initially because of IT dangers in existing blood banking software. Also, the "innovation" referred to could more accurately be referred to as "lifecycle adaptation and enhancement", not true innovation. In other words, there was not enough profit to be made in maintaining mature software under regulation. The effect might be to push the quick-buck profiteers out of the industry, and thus improve quality and innovation. The Swedish Medical Products Agency is leading the way for consideration of HIT in the EU as a medical device to be regulated as in my post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/06/improving-patient-safety-in-eu-hit.html">Improving Patient Safety In The EU: HIT Should Be Classified As Medical Devices</a>". Yet, that didn't seem to impact Swedish innovation; in the UK, Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust has recently awarded its hospital information system contract to Swedish healthcare systems provider, Cambio (<a href="http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/6214/cambio_for_wrightington_wigan_and_leigh">link</a>). Albeit in another anecdote, FDA's regulation did not harm pharma IT as far as I could tell, while a Group Director in Merck Research Labs' Research Information Systems Division. Truth is, there is no good data one way or the other regarding regulation, but after thirty or more years of an unfettered HIT industry, I believe it reasonable to say that the presence of harmful HIT speaks more for regulation than for a continued industry "free-for-all." <blockquote>The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is currently working with the FDA, VA and other federal agencies to develop a common format for reporting I.T.-related patient safety events and unsafe conditions. </blockquote> "What took so long" is my question. Read the whole article. The myth of health IT beneficence continues to be eroded. One can only hope the tens of billions earmarked for the technology in the recent economic "recovery" legislation will become similarly eroded in years to come, to allow the technology to be safely improved - that is, in vitro, not in vivo. -- SS

Health IT: "Danger"

In an article simply entitled "Danger", Health Data Management author Elizabeth Gardner spells out some "inconvenient truths...

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The Ultimate Workaround To Mission Hostile Health IT: Humans (a.k.a. "Scribes")

<div style="text-align: center;">"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic doctor. Dr. Data will be that doctor; <s style="font-style: italic;">better</s> worse than he was before. <s style="font-style: italic;">Better, stronger, faster</s> Worse, weaker, slower." -- parody of Oscar Goldman from the 1970's scifi series <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HofoK_QQxGc">The Six Million Dollar Man</a>. </div><div style="text-align: center;"> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqzasoTiRKrqW917SPMiqTdjbdN5HIlHCXgUfbNIfBWTD4XeQkZfy9lf5N9Xco8sPERtjLya5T8uhctdg9j4zFlVjiuCkMzFzon9ihChnpVyKp66kif_i3xYmzW8DByUScF3aAEaJy6w61/s1600/sixmillion.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5513937992318855618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqzasoTiRKrqW917SPMiqTdjbdN5HIlHCXgUfbNIfBWTD4XeQkZfy9lf5N9Xco8sPERtjLya5T8uhctdg9j4zFlVjiuCkMzFzon9ihChnpVyKp66kif_i3xYmzW8DByUScF3aAEaJy6w61/s320/sixmillion.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 187px; height: 121px;" /></a>"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him." </div><div style="text-align: center;"> <div style="text-align: left;">The EMR is a technology that was supposed to improve clinical medicine (revolutionize it, some say). It was supposed to facilitate clinical medicine. It was not supposed to slow physicians and others down to the point of impairing their ability to practice medicine. However, the rosy predictions are not proving to be the case. Instead, we have the ultimate workaround to the health IT <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/hostileuserexper">mission hostile user experience</a>: <blockquote>Los Angeles Times September 6, 2010 <div class="byline"> Harris Meyer <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-medical-scribes-20100906,0,2694959.story">Scribes are doctors' tech support</a> Melissa Genove has dreamed of becoming a physician since childhood. To help her prepare, she spends as many as 35 hours each week shadowing emergency room doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center. The 23-year-old listens intently as they examine patients, records their treatment plans in a laptop computer, and follows up on prescriptions, lab tests, consultations with specialists and anything else the doctors order. Genove is not an intern, or even a medical student. She is the chief medical scribe in the hospital's emergency department — and one of several thousand young people pioneering a new healthcare field. Scribes are filling a necessary niche as doctors make the wrenching transition from old-fashioned paper charts to 21st century electronic medical records. The computerized system is supposed to make doctors more efficient and ensure better care for patients. Congress has such faith in the value of electronic medical records that it provided as much as $27 billion over 10 years to encourage doctors to use them, and the Centers for <a class="taxInlineTagLink" id="HEPRG00002" title="Medicare" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/health/government-health-care/medicare-HEPRG00002.topic">Medicare</a> and Medicaid Services will penalize those who don't by cutting their reimbursement rates as much as 5%. But while the conversion is underway, doctors estimate that their productivity plummets by about 30% as they learn to cope with a complicated new system. [And what clinical IT in 2010 isn't complicated, I ask? - ed.] That's where scribes come in.</div></blockquote><div class="byline"> </div> This brings real meaning to the observation that "you should not have to work around something that is not in the way." <div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuU_k88RnHpQsZuxQqubBBxqzCSNIcPnx0vkTOwPc2fQZxA4JcqMshHV21HrzV-cTje_k_iXnqkA02yE6mz7d2M8_kEremGFdfSsMI17KQ5JIGnJMd6FrVyDWXlLDdUHRzVI-DTq72Aeen/s1600/labyrinth.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514150356466381106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuU_k88RnHpQsZuxQqubBBxqzCSNIcPnx0vkTOwPc2fQZxA4JcqMshHV21HrzV-cTje_k_iXnqkA02yE6mz7d2M8_kEremGFdfSsMI17KQ5JIGnJMd6FrVyDWXlLDdUHRzVI-DTq72Aeen/s320/labyrinth.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 237px;" /></a>Just one screen from a Cerner product (from a presentation touting recent addition of a simple database "<a href="http://www.screencast.com/users/kkoche1/folders/Jing/media/5d3aa28f-2312-4a40-8e0d-47c15dcaee90">search</a>" feature that should/could have been present eons ago). Each menu item leads to even more screens, subscreens, menus and pick lists, in labyrinthine fashion. Click to enlarge. </div> In a domain as complex as medicine, ever-increasing demands for fine grained data on clinical encounters now outstrip the 2010-style human-computer interface's abilities to allow capture of the data without massive interference in the process of medicine itself. This mismatch is due largely to the limitations of the GUI as the primary user interface (UI) metaphor, especially the widget-centric UI currently in vogue, characterized by massive numbers of screens and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUI_widget">GUI widgets</a>, labyrinthine navigation, and forced data entry of artificially and needlessly "atomized" data through interaction with multiple widgets. CPOE as an example has become a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine">Rube Goldberg</a> contraption (def: "deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion"), the furthest thing from a straightforward "typewriter for orders" as can be. For instance, a simple order requires interaction with search boxes, multiple drop down lists, scroll bars, check boxes, and other widgets to capture each micro-component of the order, wasting much time compared to writing "Sotalol hydrochloride 120 mg PO BID, first dose now." There are alternatives to "data atomization" and "widget-centricity" in the health IT user interface, apart from simply cleaning up the current interaction disorganization and other weaknesses, but the health IT industry seems largely oblivious to alternatives. <div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh21K_FklxQqTMcml0C6D5UHN3L7VF4tMXNK6_X6XNKFF0BSXZG3ClJ_iM5IDHpuWCnJgFW_rnArDAlIoBui_M_utv0-WOQXQM7rNzuKpRkbNAj3mmSoIMRhE2jd0SpRFXvkgB15CQOyl1N/s1600/Rubenvent.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5514195533630289058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh21K_FklxQqTMcml0C6D5UHN3L7VF4tMXNK6_X6XNKFF0BSXZG3ClJ_iM5IDHpuWCnJgFW_rnArDAlIoBui_M_utv0-WOQXQM7rNzuKpRkbNAj3mmSoIMRhE2jd0SpRFXvkgB15CQOyl1N/s320/Rubenvent.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 129px;" /></a>Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin: EMR's have become machines that perform simple tasks in a very complex fashion </div> Unfortunately, it's difficult to show this complexity using actual EMR images, as most health IT vendors avoid posting screen images and user manuals online, and forbid customers from doing so. They are excessively secretive about their products. Try a Google image search on 'Cerner Millenium' as an example (click <a href="http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=FKy&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&q=cerner%20millenium&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1680&bih=861">here</a>), then compare to an image search on, say, Microsoft Word (click <a href="http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=q3I&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&biw=1680&bih=861&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=microsoft+word&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=">here</a>). The inappropriate-for-medicine, management information systems (MIS)-derived business model of the healthcare IT vendors and <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=ecosystem">HIT ecosystem</a> also contributes to the, at best, stuck-in-the-1980's health IT user interface. (As an example of these issues, the industry wouldn't even listen to aforementioned UI alternatives even if I served them up on a silver platter, because using the advice would require significant investments on their part to incorporate alternative UI approaches into their products, meaning lower short and medium term profits. Unlike pharma and tangible medical devices, interest in advanced R&D in the health IT industry seems nil. Instead, complacency rules.) An important question to ponder is whether the dream of the health IT pioneers back in the 1950's and 1960's was too idealistic and indeed unrealistic to begin with. Was it based on "2001, A Space Odyssey"-style overoptimism, and the lack of foreknowledge of how little true progress would be made in the commercial IT market in human computer interaction, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, voice recognition, and other innovations by the 21st century? <blockquote>Doctors have embraced the scribes as well. "The physicians were spending too much time documenting and not enough time with the patient," said Dr. Robert Steele, chief of Loma Linda's emergency department, which began using scribes in November. "The solution was to take the doctors off the computer, put them at the bedside, and let the scribe do the transcription. It's been a huge success. The physicians love it.</blockquote> It is not hard to understand why physicians, with their years of training and expertise, would welcome relief from extremely tedious clerical tasks. <blockquote>Leaders of the three biggest companies providing scribes estimate that about 200 emergency departments in community hospitals and academic medical centers currently use them. More scribes are on the way. Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City said they are exploring the idea. Physicians in other specialties, including urology and family practice, also are starting to adopt scribes. Still, some physicians question whether college students are equipped to handle the complicated task of charting patients after only two to four months of training. Others wonder why it's necessary to hire additional staff to fill out computerized records that were supposed to be simpler and more efficient than paper.</blockquote> The key phrase is "were supposed to be simpler and more efficient" than paper. I'd likely be hard-pressed to find robust research supporting that assertion in the scientific literature. I'd be more likely find the origins of this meme in vendor marketing materials. <blockquote> "It will be interesting to watch whether the need for scribes goes away as the next generation of physicians who grew up with computers and electronic medical records comes in," said Dr. Ann O'Malley, a senior researcher at the Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington, D.C.</blockquote> This passage implies the bottleneck is those physicians who need to "get used to the IT", whereas a major component of the problem is the health IT user interface itself. Scribes might "go away" if the health IT user experience was vastly improved. The IT needs to become more physician and medicine-friendly. <blockquote> At Loma Linda [Hospital], Steele said doctors used to spend two minutes with a patient, then take four minutes typing the information into a computer. Now the doctor talks to the patient with the scribe present and summarizes the encounter to the scribe in 30 seconds. While the scribe spends three minutes entering the information into an ever-present laptop, the doctor can spend extra time with the patient. Afterward, the doctor checks the accuracy of the scribe's chart, makes any necessary additions or corrections, and signs off. Although novice scribes sometimes need the doctor's help in understanding terminology, those with several months' experience usually are spot-on, Steele said. </blockquote> Again, clerical work is a very poor use of a physician's time. Scribes are a good idea considering 2010's EMR technology, at least from the time/skills perspective. <blockquote>... [Dr. Michael] Murphy of ScribeAmerica estimates that doctors can see eight additional patients over a 10-hour shift, hiking Medicare revenues alone by $91 an hour. The companies that develop and sell electronic medical records systems are "in total denial" about how complicated they are for doctors to use, [Dr. David] Strumpf said. "They know these systems need scribes," he said. "They work with us to train our scribes on their systems, but they don't want to be public about it."</blockquote> (One wonders how much in "denial" the companies are and just who is truly in denial; after all, purchase of these systems just became a governmental priority.) Here, of course, is the major drawback to scribes: money. Scribes "typically cost $20 to $26 an hour" today, and that number is likely to rise. While the article's contributors maintain that physicians can boost their revenues by "$50 to $60 an hour" using scribes, I wonder if the overall economic impact of the generalized use of tens or hundreds of thousands of EMR scribes would be in the "wrong" direction (i.e., from the payor and government perspective). The billions spent on EMR's were supposed to reduce the costs of healthcare, not increase the expenses associated with it. I also wonder what could happen when a scribe is not available. <blockquote>At the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Va., emergency room physicians can complete electronic charts just as fast as scribes, most of whom are pre-med students at UVA. But doctors would rebel if the scribes disappeared, said Dr. Robert Reiser, medical director of the scribe program, which the university runs itself. </blockquote> Sept. 10 Addendum: See an interesting financial analysis by Doug Perednia <a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/11/scribes-lead-unintended-consequences-electronic-medical-records.html">here</a>. -- SS </div></div>

The Ultimate Workaround To Mission Hostile Health IT: Humans (a.k.a. "Scribes")

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic doctor. Dr. Data w...

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At the End of Summer, Everybody, Well, Nearly Everybody (Allergan, CVS Caremark, Stryker, WellStar) Settles

Many US health care organizations announced legal settlements as the dog days of summer drew to a close.  The hit parade included, in order of dollar amount: Stryker Corp As reported <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-26/stryker-to-pay-1-35-million-to-settle-massachusetts-marketing-claims.html">by Bloomberg News</a>: <blockquote>Sryker Corp., a maker of artificial hips and knees, will pay $1.35 million to settle claims it marketed items without regulatory approval and misled health care providers about the use of its products, the Massachusetts attorney general said. Stryker’s biotech unit engaged in unfair and deceptive trade practices that boosted sales of products used to strengthen and promote growth of bones, Massachusetts said in a filing in state court in Boston. 'Stryker Biotech subverted review procedures designed to safeguard patients and promoted uses of its products that were not shown to be safe or effective,' Martha Coakley, the attorney general, said today in a statement. </blockquote> Note that this appeared to be one of those rare cases in which allegations were made against individuals, as well as the company as a whole: <blockquote>In October 2009, the biotech unit and former president Mark Philip were indicted by a federal grand jury for misleading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the use of the products. Philip, who was president from 2004 to 2008, was accused along with three sales managers of promoting therapeutics in a manner contrary to their FDA-approved use. They pleaded not guilty, according to the case docket. </blockquote>However, the case has not yet gone to trial. As usual, the company denied anybody did anything wrong: <blockquote>As part of the Massachusetts settlement, Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Stryker didn’t admit any liability, the company said in an e-mailed statement. </blockquote> As usual, the penalties were trivial compared to the company's revenues: <blockquote>Under the agreement, Stryker will pay $325,000 in civil penalties, $875,000 to fund efforts to combat unlawful marketing and other programs to benefit health-care consumers, and $150,000 to cover attorney fees and investigative costs. The company reported 2009 revenue of $6.72 billion. </blockquote> CVS Caremark As reported very briefly by the Associated Press <a href="http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/08/31/cvs_settles_pricing_case_for_265m">via the Boston Globe</a>, <blockquote>CVS Caremark Corp. has agreed to pay $2.65 million under a settlement with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, which accused the pharmacy chain of overcharging public entities for prescription drugs. CVS will pay Massachusetts and about 200 cities and towns in the state that were allegedly overcharged under the workers compensation insurance system, Attorney General Martha Coakley said yesterday in a prepared statement.</blockquote> WellStar This story was published <a href="http://www.ajc.com/health/wellstar-agrees-to-2-602802.html">in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution</a>: <blockquote>WellStar Health System has agreed to pay $2.7 million to settle allegations that it improperly billed the state Medicaid system, Attorney General Thurbert Baker announced Monday. The agreement came after a six-month state investigation which found that WellStar mishandled claims involving patients covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. WellStar filed claims that did not properly reflect payments it received from Medicare, allowing it to receive excessive payments from Medicaid.</blockquote> As expected, the hospital system denied it was anything more than a soft-ware glitch: <blockquote>The allegations related to patients served at WellStar’s five hospitals: Cobb, Douglas, Kennestone, Windy Hill and Paulding. 'Upon learning from the state of this potential billing issue, WellStar immediately conducted an internal investigation and fully cooperated with the state,' WellStar said in a statement. The hospital system said a flaw in claims processing software caused the problem. 'The State specifically found no intent to defraud,' WellStar said. WellStar admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement , according to the attorney general’s office. </blockquote>It is not entirely clear whether any individuals suffered any negative consequences because of this soft-ware "flaw" which went undiscovered until the state investigated. In <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/wellstar-ceo-fired-by-606194.html">another AJC story</a>, which did not directly refer to the one above, published four days later: <blockquote>WellStar Health System’s president and CEO Gregory Simone was fired by the system’s board on Thursday. Board chairman and Marietta attorney Randall Bentley said the decision was a personnel matter and provided no information on the reason for Simone’s termination, which is effective immediately. Earlier this week Bonnie Wilson, WellStar’s executive vice president and general counsel, received notice that her contract would not be renewed. Bentley did not say if the terminations were related.</blockquote> Then, in <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/cobb/questions-surround-wellstar-dismissals-606572.html">a third story</a>, the hospital denied any relationship among the firings and the legal settlement: <blockquote>WellStar Health System's board this week fired the Gregory Simone, president and chief executive of the non-profit operator of five north metro hospitals and dozens of other facilities. Board chairman Randall Bentley, a Marietta attorney, gave no explanation other than to say Simone's termination was a personnel matter. It was announced Thursday and was effective immediately. His firing follows the Aug. 31 departure of Bonnie Wilson, WellStar’s executive vice president and general counsel. She was told her contract would not be renewed, according to WellStar. Bentley did not say if the Simone's firing and Wilson's departure were related. WellStar and Bentley said Simone's firing was not related to a six-month Medicare and Medicaid investigation. In August, the hospital system agreed to pay $2.7 million to settle allegations that it improperly billed the state Medicaid system, resulting in excessive payments from Medicaid.</blockquote> [sarcasm on] Of course, it was just a soft-ware "flaw," so no one was responsible, just the soft-ware. [sarcasm off] Allergan As reported again <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-01/allergan-will-pay-600-million-plead-guilty-to-misdemeanor-in-botox-probe.html">by Bloomberg</a>: <blockquote>Allergan Inc., maker of the wrinkle smoother Botox, agreed to pay $600 million and plead guilty to a misdemeanor in settling a U.S. investigation of its marketing practices. Allergan will pay $375 million to the government as part of a 'misbranding' charge that the marketing of Botox from 2000 to 2005 led to use in treating headache, pain, muscle stiffness and juvenile cerebral palsy, purposes for which the Food and Drug Administration during that time hadn’t approved marketing. Allergan will also pay $225 million to resolve civil claims from the Justice Department, the company said today in a statement. </blockquote> Once again, although the amount this time appears large, it is small compared to the revenues produced by the product in question. The total fines amount to about $100 million per year of sales, but: <blockquote>Botox, [is] Allergan’s top product with $1.3 billion in annual sales,.... </blockquote> Once again, the company denied it did anything all that bad, (even though it did plead guilty to a crime), reported <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703882304575465371767239834.html">by the Wall Street Journal</a>, <blockquote>The company, meanwhile, said the settlement resolves the investigation while avoiding substantial litigation costs and other risks associated with a government enforcement action. Allergan said its plea to the single misdemeanor 'misbranding' charge didn't involve 'false or deceptive conduct.' Specifically, the Botox marketing from 2000 to 2005 resulted in intended Botox use for four unapproved conditions, Allergan said. The drug didn't have directions for these uses, which means it was misbranded, the company said. </blockquote> Got that? On the other hand, <blockquote>Prosecutors alleged Allergan engaged in tactics to promote the drug for unapproved uses, including paying kickbacks to doctors. For example, the government charged that in 2005, Allergan hosted about 100 doctors at an invitation-only program at its corporate headquarters and a Newport Beach, Calif., resort while paying them $1,500 'to listen to off-label marketing presentations.' </blockquote> I did not see anything in any news article that suggested any individual at Allergan would suffer any negative consequences as part of this settlement. Summary So, the parade of<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/legal%20settlements"> legal settlements</a> marches on.  We have now documented a very large number of heretofore respectable health care organizations who have made legal settlements of all sorts of charges of wrong-doing.  As we have repeatedly noted, these settlements have certain characteristics.  The amount of money involved, although it may seem big to those paid less than CEOs, is usually much smaller than the amount of money that could be made by the bad behavior.  The settlement is usually paid by the organization as a whole, and so its effect may be diffused among the employees, the patients or clients, and the stock-holders, if any.  The settlement rarely involves any negative consequences for those who might have authorized, directed, or implemented the bad behavior.  Rarely is the settlement widely reported, and rarely does the organization involved seem to suffer any stain on its reputation. So is it any wonder that the bad behavior that leads to such settlements continues?  Is it any wonder that health care organizational leaders now just seem to think of such settlements as a (relatively negligible) cost of doing business? Inquiring minds may want to know how this state of affairs came to be.  Why are leaders of health care organizations (and other large organizations) able to behave with such relative impunity?  The answer may have to wait for more historical inquiry (although I recently saw what might be a clue, so stay tuned.)  My refrain has been: we will not deter unethical behavior by health care organizations until the people who authorize, direct or implement bad behavior fear some meaningfully negative consequences. Real health care reform needs to make health care leaders accountable, and especially accountable for the bad behavior that helped make them rich.

At the End of Summer, Everybody, Well, Nearly Everybody (Allergan, CVS Caremark, Stryker, WellStar) Settles

Many US health care organizations announced legal settlements as the dog days of summer drew to a close. The hit parade included, in order ...

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American Board of Medical Specialties to "incorporate tools to promote meaningful use of health IT into its maintenance-of-certification program"

From an Aug. 16 article "<a href="http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20100816/MAGAZINE/100819962">Industry pushes meaningful use through incentives</a>" in Modern Healthcare (signup unfortunately required): <blockquote>... Physicians will also be feeling the pressure to be IT savvy in order to maintain their professional certification. The American Board of Medical Specialties said that it would incorporate tools to promote meaningful use of health IT into its maintenance-of-certification program. More than 750,000 U.S. physicians are certified by an American Board of Medical Specialties (<a href="http://www.abms.org/">ABMS</a>) member board, “so it’s readily apparent” [really? - ed.] that building meaningful use of health IT into [Board] certification maintenance will benefit patients, ABMS President and CEO Kevin Weiss, said in a written statement. Additionally, the merging of these two tools “will help to facilitate physicians’ knowledge, skill and use of health IT, and in turn can improve physician performance and patient outcomes,” he said.</blockquote> The bolded statements of certitude from ABMS CEO Kevin Weiss follow the familiar pattern I observed such at my July 2010 post "<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-england-journal-on-meaningful-use.html">Science or Politics? The New England Journal and The 'Meaningful Use' Regulation for Electronic Health Records</a>". These are statements of certitude supported at best by scanty evidence, "estimations" and "projections", while refuted by a growing body of significant research on health IT as it exists now (such as the recent materials <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=2009">here</a>). It is unfortunate that the ABMS has now fallen away from evidence-based medicine and fallen prey to mysticism-based IT practices in medicine. I did, however, see moves like this coming. I believe the ABMS move augurs future, more forceful demands from the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051503667.html?hpid=topnews">healthcare IT "Trade Federation"</a> that physicians and hospitals buy and use this technology, a form of totalitarian caprice considering the evidence base. With respect to seeing this coming, here's what I wrote in my post<a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/04/masochism-medicine-and-clinical-it-how.html"> </a><a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/04/masochism-medicine-and-clinical-it-how.html">Masochism, Medicine and Clinical IT: How Physicians Can Be Beaten Over and Over, and Still Come Back For More</a> back in April 2009: <blockquote>... Here is a tale about the companies that medicine will be dependent upon for EHR's and other clinical IT - now by force of government (financial at first, but I would not at all rule out punitive licensure and other measures as a possibility in the future for "EHR noncompliers")... </blockquote><style title="owaParaStyle">P { MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px } BODY { SCROLLBAR-ARROW-COLOR: #3f52b8; SCROLLBAR-DARKSHADOW-COLOR: #fafafa; SCROLLBAR-BASE-COLOR: #f7f7f7; SCROLLBAR-HIGHLIGHT-COLOR: #cecfce; SCROLLBAR-TRACK-COLOR: #fff</style>We're not there yet, but I would not be surprised to see moves in that direction in the future. I also consider the ABMS succumbing to IT mysticism as another sign of the degradation of efforts towards true evidence-based medicine in favor of corporate interests. Fortunately, some research organizations have not entirely bought into the irrational exuberance, although whether they can exert enough influence to reform the healthcare IT industry before billions of precious dollars are wasted on today's ill conceived systems is debatable. For example, (and in <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/health-it-via-observation-and-research.html">another example</a> of research done today affirming conclusions I'd reached years ago using observational skills, knowledge of Medical Informatics, internal medicine thought processes and common sense), McKinsey offers the following. Per the recent McKinsey study "<a href="http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Health_Care/Strategy_Analysis/Reforming_hospitals_with_IT_investment_2653">Reforming hospitals with IT Investment</a>": <blockquote>... The realization of the benefits from health care IT investments will require a radically new approach to IT on the part of the CIOs of health care providers, as well as the business leaders and clinicians those CIOs serve. Health care providers will need to use new approaches to achieve an inclusive governance process with streamlined decision-making authority, a radically simplified IT architecture, and a megaproject-management capability.</blockquote> Based on observation alone, I'd <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/scotsilv/invascard.htm">written this in 2002</a> (and probably before as well, somewhere): <blockquote>... From a dual perspective as both a clinician and computer professional, it is evident that critical clinical computing projects benefit greatly from an alternate approach to project preparation, development, implementation, customization and evaluation, as compared to management information systems (business computing) projects. Clinical and business computing appear to be different subspecialties of computing. </blockquote> Instead of naïve, unquestioning IT exuberance, the ABMS and other medical professional organizations should long ago have put their efforts behind moving the health IT vendors and their hospital customers to adopt the 'radical changes' required as in the McKinsey report (and elsewhere, such as in the 2009 <a href="http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12572">National Research Council's report on health IT</a>). They should have done so before insisting use of the technology be a metric for qualifications to practice medicine. They should be pushing for the approval of health IT as medical devices under the <a href="http://www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/legislation/federalfooddrugandcosmeticactfdcact/default.htm">Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act</a> (FD&C Act), such as the EU is now moving towards; see for example the Swedish Medical Products Agency 2009 report <a href="http://www.lakemedelsverket.se/upload/foretag/medicinteknik/en/Medical-Information-Systems-Report_2009-06-18.pdf">here</a> (PDF). From that report entitled "Proposal for guidelines regarding classification of software based information systems used in health care": <blockquote> A general opinion of the health care providers represented in this Working group is that from a patient safety point of view, it is desirable that stand alone software and systems intended to, directly or indirectly, affect diagnosis, health care and treatment of an individual patient shall be regulated under a Product Safety Regulation. The Working group has not been able to define any other appropriate regulation than the Medical Device directives when it comes to the definition of such systems. ... The Working group believes that software intended for a medical purpose must be regarded as a "device" and expressions such as "project", "service" and similar must be avoided describing a Medical Information System.</blockquote> Further, ABMS should also be pushing for robust post-marketing studies of health IT. If truly representative of ensuring medical practitioners' competence in the interest of patient safety, ABMS should be discouraging specialty societies from blindly buying in to this experimental technology, and instead encouraging them to evaluate health IT critically - as critically as any new medical device or technology - including a complete examination of the literature. The ABMS should hold off on linking clerical capabilities of clinicians to board certification, per Brown University ophthalmologist <a href="http://bms.brown.edu/surgery/ophthalmology/faculty/profiles/migliori.html">Michael Migliori</a> in the above-linked Modern Healthcare story: <blockquote> “I don’t believe achieving meaningful use equates to maintenance of certification,” said Michael Migliori, an ophthalmologist in Providence, R.I. Maintenance of certification is a measurement of clinical knowledge, whereas meaningful use is a clerical designation, he said. “I understand the clinical importance of electronic medical records both in terms of patient safety and quality [although not in today's form IMO - ed.], but we are not at the point where EMR and health information exchange are ready for universal implementation,” Migliori said. “They should not be linked at this time.”</blockquote> In other words, today's health IT is not ready for national roll out, especially with any form of coercion in effect. Here's a major problem in slowing this train. The following chart appeared in the aforementioned McKinsey report on "startup costs" of EMR systems. The figures are presented in the form of dollars per bed: <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhivTP3gNOa-siHY7pXij5OOG-H0-4xs27PnRv26Rctf2LDMG1zAtCgVlo1VCILmcQONUpIyiNCpfDiwDMaPHu6NtyGr6WFpqn_WQBEeJigKPLKPAYTylip4vD0nauv4VJgAFUQHANEaTOH/s1600/mckinsey.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5511958181866088706" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhivTP3gNOa-siHY7pXij5OOG-H0-4xs27PnRv26Rctf2LDMG1zAtCgVlo1VCILmcQONUpIyiNCpfDiwDMaPHu6NtyGr6WFpqn_WQBEeJigKPLKPAYTylip4vD0nauv4VJgAFUQHANEaTOH/s320/mckinsey.jpg" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 396px; height: 227px;" /></a> <div style="text-align: center;">McKinsey on EMR startup costs, estimated at $80,000-$100,000 per bed - click to enlarge. </div><style title="owaParaStyle">P { MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px } BODY { SCROLLBAR-ARROW-COLOR: #3f52b8; SCROLLBAR-DARKSHADOW-COLOR: #fafafa; SCROLLBAR-BASE-COLOR: #f7f7f7; SCROLLBAR-HIGHLIGHT-COLOR: #cecfce; SCROLLBAR-TRACK-COLOR: #ff</style> With these levels of money moving like an overflowing fountain of champagne to the IT industry, with likely tributaries into medicine's regulatory, representation and accreditation organizations, no research seems likely to bring the radical changes needed to ensure this technology is safe and effective. (The McKinsey report also opines that well-done EMR's can recoup the gap between costs and government financial incentives shown in the chart within a few years; that is also highly debatable, even if the HIT is "done well" via radical reform.) I have no answers to these problems other than the many suggestions I've written on these blog pages since 2004, and on my <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/hitfailurecases">academic site</a> on HIT since 1999. Without those in power willing to consider that health IT today is yet another bubble or mania, then like some diseases, it may only be tincture of time that corrects these problems. That is, when the current Jurassic <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=ecosystem">health IT ecosystem</a> collapses of its own dead weight. What's sad are the expensive IT fossils -- and bodies -- that will be left behind for some future archeologist to discover. -- SS Addendum Sept. 5: EMR use as condition of licensure appears to be heading for reality in at least one state: Massachusetts. See <a href="http://healthblawg.typepad.com/healthblawg/2010/05/hit-incentives-in-massachusetts-less-carrot-more-stick.html">http://healthblawg.typepad.com/healthblawg/2010/05/hit-incentives-in-massachusetts-less-carrot-more-stick.html</a> Hat tip to Al Borges, MD. See his comment in the comments section.

American Board of Medical Specialties to "incorporate tools to promote meaningful use of health IT into its maintenance-of-certification program"

From an Aug. 16 article " Industry pushes meaningful use through incentives " in Modern Healthcare (signup unfortunately required)...

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More Hospital CEOs Join the Millionaire's Club, This Time in Baltimore

As we predicted, more stringent requirements by the US Internal Revenue Service for financial reporting by not-for-profit organizations, including hospitals and hospital systems, have produced an enlarging parade of revelations of obese pay packages for hospital leaders.  The latest report came out <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-bz-hospital-ceo-salary-20100826,0,7954079.story?page=1">courtesy the Baltimore Sun</a>: <blockquote>Baltimore-area hospital CEOs and presidents boast seven-figure salaries, club and gym memberships, and paid financial planning and tax services as part of compensation packages from their nonprofit employers. According to a survey of Baltimore-area hospitals, the highest-ranking executives were often the recipients of financial payouts and perquisites that many private-sector companies have abandoned in the face of intense public debate about excessive CEO pay. The heads of hospital systems, which oversee many facilities, tended to make the biggest salaries and incentives. Eight top executives made more than $1 million, and the largest CEO pay package totaled $7.8 million.</blockquote> The article described some of the more corpulent compensation packages. St Joseph Medical Center One was from St Joseph Medical Center, already under fire for for the lavish use of cardiac procedures by one of its staff doctors: <blockquote>St. Joseph Medical Center, a member of Catholic Health Initiatives, said in a statement that it offers a level of compensation that allows it to compete for talent. The hospital paid former CEO John K. Tolmie $846,128 in salary, bonus and other pay, the latest IRS filing shows. 'Hospital CEOs have one of the most demanding, high-pressure jobs in the nation, dealing on a daily basis with everything from ever-changing regulations to workforce shortages and lower reimbursement for services,' the hospital statement said. Tolmie resigned in May 2009 after being on administrative leave to avoid a conflict of interest during a federal investigation. Since then, one of the hospital's cardiologists, Dr. Mark G. Midei, has been accused of performing hundreds of unnecessary heart procedures. </blockquote> Mercy Medical Center: <blockquote>Mercy Medical Center head Thomas Mullen made $1.08 million in compensation during fiscal 2009. The hospital said in a statement that it 'believes this compensation to be appropriate given the responsibilities of serving as a president and CEO of a $520 million health system.'</blockquote> Johns Hopkins One might expect the CEO of the Johns Hopkins hospital system to be paid well, but he was paid particularly well since he also seemed to have the full-time, separately paid position of dean of the medical school: <blockquote>Edward Miller, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, made $729,297. He also gets paid separately for his position as dean of the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. The fiscal 2009 filing for the medical school was not yet available. But Miller collected $1.4 million for that job the year before.</blockquote>Summary A chart of the compensation of all CEOs is <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bal-hospital-ceo-pay-data,0,373861.htmlpage">here</a>. As noted in the article, eight CEOs got more than $1 million, and another three got over $900,000. A Baltimore Sun commentator <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-bz-hancock-hospital-pay-20100829,0,3121681.column">noted</a> that not only did the CEOs get large salaries, but: <blockquote>Close to a dozen had personal dues for 'social clubs' financed by your charitable donations, tax dollars and health insurance premiums. Many enjoy lavish and opaque executive retirement plans that also put upward pressure on the medical costs that threaten government budgets and the economy.</blockquote> As we have noted before, he pointed out that it is unseemly for not-for-profit hospitals, which are supposed to be devoted to the mission of caring for patients, usually explicitly including poor patients, and which are funded to a great extent by government programs and the income from donations, to make millionaires out of their top hired executives: <blockquote>Hospitals aren't Goldman Sachs. They're not Stanley Black & Decker or Microsoft, either. They're nonprofits, getting charitable donations and huge government subsidies beyond all the loot they rake in from Medicare and Medicaid. If the newly required disclosures on the IRS 'Form 990' put pressure on hospital boards and CEOs to tone it down, it's about time.</blockquote> People who donate to hospitals, thinking they are doing so to provide better health care, or to help out the less fortunate, may be surprised to hear about the hospital CEO as millionaire: <blockquote>For some hospital donors, the revelations are transparently shocking. 'Donors are completely outraged,' says Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, an organization that helps people make smart giving choices. 'Donors tell us more than anything that they're just blown away by the fact that an organization that is a charity basically is creating millionaires in its leadership.' 'The most common remark we get is this: 'I've been giving to this organization for years, and I can't believe what the CEO is making, and I will never support this organization again.' '</blockquote> I am glad that newspaper commentators are getting even more wound up on this issue than I have: <blockquote>Why any hospital executive should need a company-paid club membership is a deep mystery. It can't be to woo potential donors. No donor with half a brain wants to endow an institution so employees can play golf with her money. It shouldn't be to wine and dine business prospects. A hospital's business is collecting revenue for medical care. To be frank, there's too much of that going on already for the good of the country's wallet. Hospitals are far too focused on sales and marketing and not enough on delivering quality, efficient care. Hospital trustees on any compensation committee can deliver a windy treatise about how pay for senior executives is ethical, carefully considered and worth every penny. It's all a crock. The 'independent' compensation consultants that boards rely on are often referred by the CEO himself. The consultants know they can't make waves, or they won't get hired to rubber-stamp executive pay at other hospitals. To justify high pay, boards and consultants often use unrealistic comparisons from much bigger institutions or from the for-profit sector. It doesn't take $1 million to get a great boss.</blockquote> But it gets worse. People who love to play golf on company money, and feel entitled to make a million or more are not the right people to lead organizations that are supposed to focus first on health care, including health care for the less fortunate. Moreover, people who get used to the pay and perks are likely to focus on keeping them coming, rather than the mission, even if they started out with some devotion to the mission.  Furthermore, the excessive pay and perks are perverse incentives, telling the CEOs that they are wonderful people, they can do no wrong, and should stand for no criticism, all further diverting them from what they really are supposed to be doing: upholding the mission. As we have said many times before, true health care reform would encourage leadership of health care who understand health care and care about its mission, rather than those who see a quick way to make a small fortune.

More Hospital CEOs Join the Millionaire's Club, This Time in Baltimore

As we predicted, more stringent requirements by the US Internal Revenue Service for financial reporting by not-for-profit organizations, inc...

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"Trouble Coming Every Day" as Discussed by our Fellow Health Care Skeptics

With apologies to the late Frank Zappa... even though we are going through the dog days of summer, the parade of health care troubles in the news is never ending, so I thought I would recap some of the more interesting issues discussed by some of my fellow health care skeptic bloggers. We have discussed the ongoing decline of <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/primary%20care">primary care</a>. On DB's Medical Rants, Dr Robert Centor <a href="http://www.medrants.com/archives/5776">takes on </a>the topic: "The system has, without consciously meaning to, held primary care in contempt." The result is a "quiet rebellion: of primary doctors. We have <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-oligopolists-rationalize-their.html">discussed</a> whether the currently fashionable idea of "accountable care organizations" (ACOs) might turn out to be a cover for health care oligopolies. See what Paul Levy, CEO of the Beth Israel/ Deaconess Medical Center <a href="http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2010/08/aco-global-payments-market-dominance.html">said</a> about them in his blog, Running a Hospital. We frequently talk about the <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/manipulating%20clinical%20research">manipulation</a> or <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/suppression%20of%20medical%20research">suppression </a>of clinical research studies by those with vested interests in the results pointing in a particular direction. On the Hooked: Ethics, Medicine and Pharma blog, Dr Howard Brody <a href="http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2010/08/spinal-fusion-devices-whats-fda-hiding.html">wondered</a> why the FDA will not even reveal the identities of the clinical researchers who did the studies on which it based its decision to approve the Infuse bone growth enhancement device. Prof Carl Elliott has done an outstanding job investigating commercially funded and implemented clinical research. Dr Brody <a href="http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-tidbits-from-white-coat-black-hat.html">reviewed</a> his new book, White Coat, Black Hat.  In the Carlat Psychiatry Blog, Dr Daniel Carlat <a href="http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2010/08/making-killing-new-carl-elliott-article.html">reviewed</a> Prof Elliott's new article in Mother Jones on how a pharmaceutical company sponsored drug trial went badly awry. We <a href="http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-did-ceo-who-presided-over-company.html">asked </a>whether the former CEO of a for-profit hospital chain who resigned after the company paid a > $1.7 billion penalty to settle charges of fraud would be a proper candidate to be governor of Florida. After Rick Scott won the Florida Republican primary, Maggie Maher, writing in the Health Beat blog, <a href="http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2010/08/i-remember-rick-scott-a-great-makeover-but-still-the-same-guy-part1.html">took on </a>Scott's dubious past as prologue to a worrisome future. Well I'm about to get sick From watchin' my TV Been checkin' out the news Until my eyeballs fail to see I mean to say that every day Is just another rotten mess And when it's gonna change, my friend Is anybody's guess So I'm watchin' and I'm waitin' Hopin' for the best Even think I'll go to prayin' Every time I hear 'em sayin' That there's no way to delay That trouble comin' every day No way to delay That trouble comin' every day - Frank Zappa

"Trouble Coming Every Day" as Discussed by our Fellow Health Care Skeptics

With apologies to the late Frank Zappa... even though we are going through the dog days of summer, the parade of health care troubles in the...

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Health IT Personnel - Aliens in Healthcare?

-------------------------------- Sept. 1 Important note - it appears the survey results referenced below were contaminated by activists who could not allow this survey to occur unmolested. From <a href="http://histalk2.com/2010/08/31/news-9110/">HIStalk</a>, the source of the survey, a site ordinarily read by a relatively narrow health IT-involved audience: <blockquote style="font-style: italic;">If you’ve been following the current poll and comments on Ed Marx’s <a href="http://histalk2.com/2010/08/25/cio-unplugged-82510/" target="_blank">Blessing of the Hands</a> post, you may wonder why the comments suddenly turned ugly. An <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZ_Myers" target="_blank">atheist blogger</a> linked to it and his followers dropped by to vote and opine. Since the point was to find out what industry people think, here’s the stat that counts: the poll was running 50-50 when it was just real readers voting. </blockquote> The Aug. 30 post below may reflect sabotage of the poll. -- SS -------------------------------- It is commonly accepted that respect for patient's cultural, ethical and religious views must be taken into account in their care. In fact, that understanding and respect for those values are critical. I think it also fair to say that many if not most practitioners of medicine also believe in a force higher than themselves, even if not formally involved in organized religion. I, in fact, minored in the history of religion in college. One of the most valuable pre-med courses I participated in concerned religious beliefs about illness, death and dying. In a remarkable survey at the anonymous <a href="http://www.histalk.com/">HIStalk</a> health IT industry/rumor blog site, however, these views seem alien to many of the HIT personnel who frequent that site. As of this time (8/3/2010, 10:15 AM EST) the tally of responses to this<a href="http://histalk2.com/2010/08/28/monday-morning-update-83010/"> sidebar question at that site</a> in part created after reactions to a CIO essay on religious values <a href="http://histalk2.com/2010/08/25/cio-unplugged-82510/">here</a>: <blockquote style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Should hospital IT employees be expected to have a higher level of compassion and spiritual beliefs than their counterparts in other industries?</blockquote> are as follows: <blockquote style="font-weight: bold;">No - 90% (519 votes) Yes - 10% (59 votes)</blockquote> While informal, I'd say a red flag is raised. These results go against mainstream values in medicine, and the values of our American culture and heritage at large. Some of the <a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/3686153">comments</a> in particular were revealing of contempt for these values and arrogant certitude typical of the IT field in general: Example 1: <blockquote>Higher level of compassion and sense of responsibility yes, spiritual beliefs - no. Relying on belief in many cases may cause more harm than good. Of course, some types of spiritual beliefs lead to heightened sense of responsibility (like the one Ed Marx has demonstrated), but not all, and heightened sense of responsibility is not dependent on one's spiritual beliefs.</blockquote> Example 2: <blockquote>I understand the meaning of the word COMPASSION, as the expression of sympathy for a separate person in different circucmstances. I expect that understanding is the common on. I have some ideas on how it works conceptually, and I expect I could find common ground with a great many people on that subject. I understand the meaning of the term SPIRITUAL BELIEFS, as the holding of a baseless conviction as to the existence of disembodied consciousness. I am confident that those who have them would express them as convictions or the equivalent of convictions, that they are unable to point to evidence supporting their convictions, would agree their beliefs entail disembodied consciousness, but would prefer to put it some other way. I have no understanding at all of how a disembodied consciousness would be able to exert influence on embodied third parties, or how a person who believes in the existence of disembodied consciousness might explain it. Perhaps I am missing something obvious. If so, I would appreciate someone explaining it here.</blockquote> Example 3: <blockquote>I agree ... I'm very tired of this idea that only religious people can be moral or compassionate or sensitive. It's simply not true. And competence, the most important quality in an IT person, has absolutely no connection to religiosity.</blockquote> Example 4: <blockquote>Good grief, I hope I don't get sick and then have to go to a hospital full of staff that think that their religious bend can help heal people. Annointing oil? What a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.</blockquote> Example 5: <blockquote><div class="img"> <a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/3686153#"> </a> </div> <div class="text">Lol, this ceremony probably makes the chaplains maintain a sense of importance. Sorry to puncture the bubble, but your magic oil and mumbo jumbo belong to the first century desert tribes, not a 21rst century hospital.</div></blockquote><div class="text"></div> While people in healthcare and anywhere else in this country are free to believe in God or not, people in healthcare should be sympathetic to those who do, no matter what their own personal feelings. These comments and the survey results in general, I fear, show contempt for religious values and for those who hold them. There's a comment about these folks actually having a cybernetic religion of sorts: <div class="text"></div><blockquote><div class="text">You folks *do* have a religion. You worship machines.</div></blockquote> I agree with that assessment. Others in a <a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/medinformatic1/saudi.htm">Middle Eastern oil-producing country I once visite</a><a href="http://www.ischool.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/medinformatic1/saudi.htm">d</a> to implement IT for care improvement of children with birth defects, in part out of interest in personally living by example and promoting cultural and religious reconciliation, have a different term for that particular religion: idolatry. I can't say I disagree with that, either. "Compassion" and "contempt" may both begin with the letter "c", but are essentially incompatible. Those with contempt for common patient values such as religious beliefs should not be working on tools critical for safe care delivery, in my opinion. In fact, I'd rather have this type of arrogant, contemptuous healthcare facilitator not working in healthcare at all. -- SS

Health IT Personnel - Aliens in Healthcare?

-------------------------------- Sept. 1 Important note - it appears the survey results referenced below were contaminated by activists who ...

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