By Cliff Montgomery – Sept. 5th, 2010
For over 20 years, technology companies have fought every attempt to create a stronger democratic oversightof digital health record systems. And the Obama Administration has yet to establish a mandatory nationalmonitoring procedure for electronic medical files, even as it works to create a digital health record for everyAmerican by 2014.
The plan to create an electronic medical file for each American already may cost taxpayers up to $27 billion.Such a high price tag for the system would seem to demand equally high standards.
But perhaps standards aren’t important? Let’s find out…
“Computers at a major Midwest hospital chain went awry on June 29,” stated The Huffington Post InvestigativeFund in an article printed last month, “posting some doctors’ orders to the wrong medical charts in a few casesand possibly putting patients in harm’s way.”
The electronic file system “would switch to another patient record without the user directing it to do so,”Stephen Shivinsky, Corporate Communications Vice-President at Trinity Health System, told the InvestigativeFund.
Trinity Health System is a large health care network which operates 46 hospitals, chiefly in Michigan, Ohio andIowa.
Over a week later, a second, unrelated problem with its $400 million digital records system forced Trinity to shutoff the electronic service for four hours, at ten of its hospitals.
The issue? The digital system’s pharmacy orders weren’t sent to nurses, who need the information toadminister the proper drugs and dosages to their patients.
“As soon as it was brought to our attention, we moved to fix the problem,” Shivinsky told the Fund. He furthersaid that no one was injured as a result of either crisis.
Trinity’s digital health record system is one of the U.S. hospital industry’s largest, with over seven millionindividual patient files.
Such incidents reveal the risks faced by even the larger health organizations as they make the switch toelectronic medical record systems.
The record-keeping move almost certainly is inevitable–and no one will doubt a computer system’s superiorcapacity to monitor and deliver much-needed data.
On top of all that, backers of electronic health record systems point out that this switch will almost certainlyslow America’s out-of-control medical costs.
So why is there no discernable oversight of these vitally important systems?
“That no [national] process exists to report and track errors, pinpoint their causes and prevent them fromrecurring,” stated the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, “is largely the result of two decades of resistance bythe technology industry.”
Shivinsky told the Fund he was unsure if U.S. officials knew of the problems Trinity experienced with the newdigital health record technology.
Currently, no one is required to notify federal officials when an electronic medical filing system malfunctions.
Digital health record systems are being sold across the nation. Cerner Corp. makes the program used at Trinity.
Kelli Christman, a Cerner spokesperson, failed to respond to numerous phone calls and emails from theHuffington Post Fund seeking comment.
