Transcript EHR: Benefits & Perils - College of Computing & Informatics

Health IT Promises and Threats:
A Dose of Reality about Cybernetic Miracles
Oct. 1, 2009
Scot M. Silverstein, MD
College of Information Science & Technology
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
You will hear about:
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A cross occupational invasion of healthcare by the IT sector –
this hurts you – along with an “irrational exuberance” about
computers that the health IT sector and its pundits generate
and nurture.
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Promises of the Informatics pioneers
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Utopian promises
– Where did these promises originate?
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Real world reports and experiences
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Threats to patient safety and privacy, medical practice,
medical autonomy
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Action items
First principles (1)
• Health IT can achieve many of the promises made about it, but:
only if done well.
• Behind the simple words “done well” lies massive complexity.
• Computerizing healthcare may be more of a “wicked problem”
than a tractable one.
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Wicked problem: problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete,
contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Because
of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may
reveal or create other problems.
First principles (2)
• Critical thinking always, or your patient’s
dead. - Victor P. Satinsky, MD, Hahnemann Medical College.
(Modest) Promises of the Pioneers
Practitioners of medicine need the help of computer techniques:
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(1) for the storage and retrieval of the facts of care of their individual
patients;
(2) in order to place these facts immediately in the spectrum of
similar studies or observations on other patients in the same hospital
or region; and
(3) in order to keep contact with the ever-growing mass of new
medical knowledge (Lindberg DAB. The Computer and Medical Care.
Springfield, IL.: Charles C. Thomas, 1968.)
When I began in medical informatics, 1992:
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Computer tools can help facilitate the clinician in delivering better
quality medical care through quicker access to data, and through
automated decision support based on the patient’s condition and
known medical science. (And maybe improve costs of the care
somewhat.)
Irrationally exuberant promises?
• “We will revolutionize healthcare!” - CEOs of HBOC,
Cerner, etc. leading a CIO panel at Microsoft Healthcare User’s Group, ca.
1997.
– I ask “who in this room has ever studied medicine or cared
for patients?”
• “Bellicose grandiosity” surprised me.
Irrationally exuberant promises? (cont.)
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President Bush, Address to Nation,1/24/2004:
– “… we can control health care costs and improve care by moving American
medicine into the information age … [my budget] would encourage the
replacement of handwritten charts and scattered medical files with a unified
system of computerized records. By taking this action, we would improve
care, and help prevent dangerous medical errors, saving both lives and
money."
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President Obama:
– Computers “will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to
repeat expensive medical tests," he said, adding that the switch also
would save lives by reducing the number of errors in medicine.”
– Let’s invest tens of billions now … or else …
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A perfected technology … right?
–
Bernard Madoff: “Continuous returns, no matter what!”
Where did these promises originate?
A Wash. Post article lands a bulls eye
• The Machinery Behind Health-Care Reform: How an Industry
Lobby Scored a Swift, Unexpected Victory by Channeling
Billions to Electronic Records - Robert O'Harrow Jr., May 16,
2009 (link)
– When President Obama won approval for his $787 billion stimulus package
in February, large sections of the 407-page bill focused on a push for new
technology that would not stimulate the economy for years. The inclusion of
as much as $36.5 billion in spending to create a nationwide network of
electronic health records … was more than a political victory for the new
administration. It also represented a triumph for an influential trade
group whose members now stand to gain billions in taxpayer dollars.
The Health IT Lobby (cont.)
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Washington Post review found that the trade group, the Healthcare
Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), had worked
closely with technology vendors, researchers and other allies in a
sophisticated, decade-long [lobbying] campaign to shape public opinion
and win over Washington's political machinery
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Started a half-century ago, it represents 350 companies and about
20,000 members.
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Corporate members include government contractors such as Lockheed
Martin and Northrop Grumman, health-care technology giants such as
McKesson, Ingenix and GE Healthcare, and drug industry leaders,
including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
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With financial backing from the industry, they started advocacy
groups, generated research to show the potential for massive
savings** and met routinely with lawmakers and other government
officials.
** Any conflicts of interest here?
Inescapable Consequences of New Information Technologies:
(Does your CIO and vendor know about these? Or care?)
• IT is not value neutral: its use creates winners and losers.
• IT use leads to multiple, and often paradoxical, effects.
• IT use has moral, and ethical aspects and these have social
consequences.
• IT is configurable – it is actually collections of distinct
components (and mis-configurable as well)…
• IT follows trajectories and these trajectories often favor the
status quo
• IT co-evolves during design/development/use (functionally, or
dysfunctionally)…
(from Kling, Rosenbaum & Sawyer, “Understanding And Communicating Social
Informatics”, Information Today, 2005 (Amazon link here)
HIT In The Real World, 2009
• Some successes:
– Veterans Administration
(VistA-CPRS)
– Unique environment,
unique approaches, not
emulated in the HIT
industry:
• Medical Informatics 20/20:
Quality and Electronic Health
Records through
Collaboration, Open
Solutions, and Innovation.
Goldstein, Groen, MPA,
Ponkshe, Wine, 2007 (link).
However…even here…
“Software hiccups cause drug, treatment errors at VA”
Associated Press
Posted: January 14, 2009 - 5:59 am EDT
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090114/REG/301149994/1153&nocache=1
Patients at Veterans Affairs health centers around the country were given incorrect doses of drugs, had
needed treatments delayed and may have been exposed to other medical errors because of software
glitches that showed faulty displays of their electronic health records.
Glitches began in August 2008 and lingered until Dec. 2008. Not disclosed by the Veterans Affairs Department
to patients even though they sometimes involved prolonged infusions of drugs such as heparin, according to
internal documents obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act.
… The glitches involved medical data—vital signs, laboratory results and active medications—that sometimes
popped up under another patient's name on the computer screen.
Records also failed to clearly display a doctor's stop order, leading to reported cases of unnecessary
doses of intravenous drugs such as blood-thinning heparin … there were nine reported cases where patients
at the VA medical centers were given incorrect doses—six of them involving heparin drips that were given for
up to 11 hours longer than necessary.
Luck prevailed … this time.
AHLTA, on the other hand…
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“Electronic Records System Unreliable, Difficult to Use, Service
Officials Tell Congress”: U.S. Medicine - the Voice of Federal
Medicine, May 2009 - Sandra Basu
– AHLTA, the DOD’s $4 billion EMR, continues to be difficult for military
physicians to use, according to top military health leaders who spoke at a
House Armed Services subcommittee hearing at the end of March.
– At a Congressional hearing titled “AHLTA is ‘Intolerable,’ Where do we go
from here?” top leaders said “medical personnel are hampered by an
electronic medical record system that, among other issues, is slow,
difficult to use, unreliable and frequently crashes.”
– … we faced a near mutiny of our healthcare providers, our doctors, our
nurse practitioners, physician assistants and others last summer.” Army
Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, MC, USA at a joint Military
Personnel Subcommittee and Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and
Capabilities Subcommittee hearing.
AHLTA, cont.
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Military doctors and nurses who use AHLTA: it is unreliable, difficult to
use and has decreased the number of patients they can see each
day. Medical professionals leave the military because of their
frustration.”
•
… medical personnel, particularly specialists, often “spend as much
or more time working around the system as they do with the
system.”
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Air Force primary care physicians spend about 40 percent of their
time working with AHLTA versus 60 percent of their time with
patients.
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Specialists “working around the system trying to find new
solutions,” since the system does not address the needs unique to
their practices … the problems have resulted in “low productivity and
provider morale.”
HIT In The Real World, 2009 (cont. )
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Kaiser Permanente (“Kaiser’s Long Road”, Health Data Management, Aug. 1,
2009, link):
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So far, Kaiser's hospitals and clinics have reaped a “wide range of large and small benefits
from the EHR effort”:
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Ambulatory visits dropped 8% in the 18 months after each EHR implementation. That eases the need
to hire more staff as HMO enrollment grows
Patients using the portal are making far fewer phone calls, relying on more efficient e-mails instead
Eliminated a large volume of mailings of routine lab results.
Able to shut off a number of information systems that have become obsolete thanks to the clinical
automation effort, "savings tens of millions of dollars.”
Early successes in improving outcomes .. study of 14,000 patients treated after MI, the death rate
decreased substantially compared with before automation.
At what cost?
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Nov. 2006: Justen Deal, a 25-year-old employee of HMO giant Kaiser Permanente, placed on
administrative leave after criticizing the company's $3 billion information technology investment and
some of its providers, including Epic Systems, in an e-mail he sent to all Kaiser employees and
later to the company's board of directors. Projected a $7 billion loss for the company over the next
two years if expenses aren't better controlled.
Deal: “We're spending recklessly, to the tune of over $1.5 billion in waste every year, primarily on
HealthConnect, but also on other inefficient and ineffective information technology projects.
His entire letter can be read here. Many themes familiar to medical informatics specialists. True
or not?
Information on HIT problems remarkably scarce: why?
Scarcity of information easing.
2009 has been a remarkable
year…
National Academies study - at the best HIT centers:
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National Academies, National Research Council, Jan. 2009: “CURRENT
APPROACHES TO U.S. HEALTH CARE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ARE
INSUFFICIENT” (link):
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Current efforts aimed at the nationwide deployment of health care information technology (IT)
will not be sufficient to achieve medical leaders' vision of health care in the 21st century and
may even set back the cause.
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Difficulties with data sharing and integration, deployment of new IT capabilities, and large-scale
data management.
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Current health care IT systems offer little cognitive support; clinicians spend a great deal of
time sifting through large amounts of raw data (such as lab and other test results) and integrating
it with their medical knowledge to form a whole picture of the patient.
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Data entered mainly to comply with regulations or to defend against lawsuits, rather than to
improve care. As a result, valuable time and energy is spent managing data as opposed to
understanding the patient.
So, let’s all rush right in!
Joint Commission:
Sentinel Events Alert
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Safely implementing health information and converging technologies Dec. 2008 (link)
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As health information technology (HIT) … is increasingly adopted by health care
organizations, users must be mindful of the safety risks and preventable adverse
events that these implementations can create or perpetuate.
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Any form of technology may adversely affect the quality and safety of care if it is
designed or implemented improperly or is misinterpreted.
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There is a dearth of data on the incidence of adverse events directly caused by HIT
overall.
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Technology-related adverse events … happen when health care providers and leaders
do not carefully consider the impact technology can have on care processes, workflow
and safety.
So, let’s all rush right in!
American Medical Informatics Association
Health IT Success and Failure: Recommendations from Literature and an AMIA
Workshop. Kaplan and Harris-Salamone, Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association 2009;16(3):291-299 (evolutionary history of this paper is here).
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… IT implementation projects are often not successful. Across industry sectors, at least 40% of such
generic IT projects either are abandoned or fail to meet business requirements, while fewer than 40% of
large systems purchased from vendors meet their goals. Some sources report 70% failure rates. Other
studies show that as few as one in eight information technology projects is considered truly successful, with
more than half overshooting budgets and timetables and still not delivering what was promised.
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Failure in health care IT: ”significant budget and timeline overruns, under-delivery of value, and the
outright termination of a project before completion are all forms of failure.
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Hospitals are among those organizations where delays and cancellations of software projects are endemic.
For years, problems have plagued the implementation of health IT applications, whether for ancillary
services, for whole institutions, for regional or national systems, or for consumers. Heeks 2006: "best
estimate that most HIS [health information systems] fail in some way."
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Severe problems repeatedly have beset a variety of efforts: hospital information systems and electronic
records; ambulance services; community, regional, and national Health Information Networks; public
health systems; patient education; and physician order entry.
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The situation is even more disturbing when high-profile failures, partial successes, and unsustainable IT
undertakings are coupled with accumulating evidence of negative unintended consequences, increased
error rates accompanying IT use, and the need for workarounds.
UK National Programme for IT in the NHS
• Progress in the UK National Programme for IT in the NHS:
Progress since 2006 - Public Accounts Committee, House of
Commons,14 Jan 2009 (link)
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Recent progress has been very disappointing, just six deployments in total during the
first five months of 2008-09. The completion date of 2014-15, four years later than
originally planned, was forecast before the termination of Fujitsu's contract and
must now be in doubt. The arrangements for the South have still not been resolved.
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By end of 2008 the “Lorenzo” care records software had still not gone live
throughout a single Acute Trust. Continuing delays, history of missed deadlines
grounds for serious concern as to whether Lorenzo can be deployed in a reasonable
timescale in a form that brings demonstrable benefits to users and patients.
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Of the four original Local Service Providers (contractors), two have left the Programme,
and just two remain, both carrying large commitments … it is vitally important that the
Department assesses BT's and CSC's capacity and capability to continue to meet
their substantial commitments.
UK The National Programme for IT in the NHS
(cont.)
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Termination of Fujitsu's contract has caused uncertainty among Trusts in the South and
new deployments have stopped. One option: have a choice of either Lorenzo or
[Cerner] Millennium. There are, however, considerable problems with existing
deployments of [Cerner] Millennium and serious concerns about the prospects for
future deployments of Lorenzo.
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Programme not providing value for money at present because there have been few
successful deployments of the [Cerner] Millennium system and none of Lorenzo
in any Acute Trust. Trusts cannot be expected to take on the burden of deploying care
records systems that do not work effectively … the Department should assess the
financial case for allowing Trusts to put forward applications for central funding for
alternative systems compatible with the objectives of the Programme.
– This in a medical system far less complex than in the USA
UK National Programme for IT in the NHS
(cont.)
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Appx. £13 billion spent so far.
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2007: The former head of the NHS IT programme Richard Granger has said he
was “ashamed of the quality of some of the systems put into the NHS by
Connecting for Health suppliers”, singling Cerner out for criticism (link).
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Going further than he before in acknowledging the extent of failings of systems
provided to some parts of the NHS - such as Milton Keynes – the Connecting for
Health boss, said "Sometimes we put in stuff that I'm just ashamed of. Some
of the stuff that Cerner has put in recently is appalling."
So, let’s all rush right in!
Busting other myths…
Health IT in Ambulatory care
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Electronic Health Record Use and the Quality of Ambulatory Care
in the United States. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:1400-1405 (link to
abstract here)
– The authors examined EHR use throughout the U.S. and
association with 17 basic quality indicators.
– Concluded that “as implemented, EHRs were not associated with
better quality ambulatory care.”
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– To medical informaticists, the key phrase that explains these
findings is “as implemented”, to which I would also add “as
designed”, i.e., badly.
So, let’s all rush right in!
On the cost savings forecasts
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“Electronic Medical Records and Health Care Transformation”, Walker
JM (Geisinger), Health Affairs, Sept/Oct 2005:
– “Expectations get set too high in the process [of health IT sales, implementation
and promotion], making non-clinicians forget that EMR supported healthcare
transformation is 'too immature for credible estimates of cost or benefits’ …
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We need to know more about the total cost of EMR’s and the ways in which they
will interact with existing healthcare systems to make compelling predictions
about their clinical benefits or the savings they can enable.”
Peter Orszag, CBO director:
– “Use of EHRs, without a major change in health care delivery, would not
significantly reduce overall health care costs” - CBO 2007 report on longterm health care spending.
– “The ROI for EHRs "is not going to be as substantial as people think."
So, let’s all rush right in!
“Failure and de-installation abound”
• Oct. 2007: Modern Healthcare reports on a survey of
healthcare IT use conducted by the Boston-based
Medical Records Institute
• Nearly 19% of respondents have experienced EMR
de-installation (12%) or are now going through a deinstallation (7%)
• 8% of those surveyed indicated they'd ripped out
EMRs & gone back to paper, with 6% indicating the
uprooting occurred in the past, while another 2%
responded that they were now experiencing the
reversion to paper.
Examples of what my “in the trenches” students
candidly and regularly report:
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“… In our organization we implemented an electronic clinical documentation system for the ED, a
completely different system than for inpatient. A dilemma has been created ...when patients receive
care in our ED, are admitted and held in the ED due to lack of bed capacity in the hospital, the staff
have to double document pertinent information in both systems because the systems do not
"talk" to each other. We are in the process of building an interface, but it has taken a lot of time,
effort and money.”
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“Last year we implemented barcoding medication administration, where the patient's medications and
bracelet is scanned at the bedside ... it has added 15-30 minutes on to our nurses workflow at every
med administration pass, which occur at least 4-5 times per shift.”
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Hi all, I saw a really interesting presentation by [name redacted] of [name redacted] Health System
today. He is a practicing GI doctor in a [~20]-doctor practice. His practice is planning to replace the
EMR they installed only 5 years ago. The reason he gave was that the vendor was "under capitalized"
and therefore unable to keep up with other companies technologically. (An interesting thing that
they did not take into account in the initial evaluation.)
They also report known EMR defects:
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The EMR we use has thousands of reported defects. We have lists of
them awaiting remediation.
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There are currently __ defects known at as reported by its staff. Of these defects, __%
fall into the category of affecting revenue, __% fall into the category of affecting clinician
work efficiency, and __ % fall into the category of affecting patient safety and outcomes.
__ % fall into Class 1, "likely to cause patient harm in short term if uncorrected",
__% fall into Class 2, "may cause in patient harm in medium or long term", and __% fall
into Class 3, "not likely to cause patient harm, but may affect operations."
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Note: Patients do not undergo informed consent regarding use of
these virtual medical devices in their care …
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(See my partially tongue in cheek essay “Patient Rights Statement and Informed Consent on Use
of Clinical IT Devices” at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/03/draft-patient-rights-statementand.html)
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They tell me of “Close Calls” – order transpositions, ghost orders and
lost orders, EMAR problems, wrong unit conversions, etc. Have to
come up with workarounds introducing still more chances for errors.
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Are vendors in a hurry to fix these defects? If not, why not?
No: Vendors Held Harmless,
users gagged on divulging defects
Health Care Information Technology Vendors' "Hold Harmless“ Clause:
Implications for Patients and Clinicians, Ross Koppel, PhD; David Kreda, BA
[Univ. of Pennsylvania], JAMA. 2009;301(12):1276-1278 (link)
• Health care information technology (HIT) vendors enjoy a
contractual and legal structure that renders them virtually liability
free—"hold harmless" is the term of art—even when their
proprietary products may be implicated in adverse events
involving patients.
• This contractual and legal device shifts liability and remedial
burdens to physicians, nurses, hospitals, and clinics, even
when these HIT users are strictly following vendor instructions.
• HIT vendors are not responsible for errors their systems
introduce in patient treatment, because physicians, nurses,
pharmacists, and health care technicians should be able to
identify—and correct—any errors generated by software faults.
Doctors are liable for IT screw-up's?
• Hey, you’re omniscient, right?
• (Hospital execs signing such contracts violate
JC safety standards and their fiduciary duties
as well)
– “Health Care Information Technology, Hospital Responsibilities, and
Joint Commission Standards”, Silverstein S., JAMA. 2009;302(4):382
(link).
• Thank god for sociologists
• (Medicine needs sociologists to point
out to us that health IT has major
problems?)
CPOE – user friendly panacea, right?
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Role of Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems in
Facilitating Medication Errors, Ross Koppel, PhD et. al.,
JAMA. 2005;293:1197-1203 (link).
– Found that a widely used CPOE system facilitated 22 types of
medication error risks from misdesign, e.g.:
• fragmented CPOE displays that prevent a coherent view of patients’ medications
• pharmacy inventory displays mistaken for dosage guidelines, ignored antibiotic
renewal notices placed on paper charts rather than in the CPOE system
• separation of functions that facilitate double dosing and incompatible orders
• inflexible ordering formats generating wrong orders.
• Three quarters of the house staff reported observing each of these error risks,
indicating that they occur weekly or more often.
– Versioning problem, or not? (I noted similar problems w/same vendor
product: in 1992!)
Barcoding – anther slam dunk, right?
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Workarounds to Barcode Medication Administration Systems: Their Occurrences,
Causes, and Threats to Patient Safety, Koppel et al, Journal of the American Medical
Informatics Association 2008;15(4):408-423 (link)
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Found that shortcomings in barcoded medication administration (BCMA)‘s design, implementation,
and workflow integration encourage workarounds.
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Identified 15 types of workarounds, for example: affixing patient identification barcodes to computer
carts, scanners, doorjambs, or nurses' belt rings; or carrying several patients' prescanned
medications on carts.
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Identified 31 types of causes of workarounds, e.g.,
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unreadable medication barcodes (crinkled, smudged, torn, missing, covered by another label);
malfunctioning scanners;
unreadable or missing patient identification wristbands (chewed, soaked, missing);
Non-barcoded medications;
failing batteries;
uncertain wireless connectivity;
emergencies.
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Possible consequences of the workarounds include wrong administration of medications, wrong
doses, wrong times, and wrong formulations.
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Integrating BCMAs within real-world clinical workflows requires attention to in situ use to ensure
safety features' correct use. (Perhaps even more so for health IT used for cognitive support rather
than process support!)
So, the time is ripe, let’s all rush right in!
Regulation of Health IT:
In some fields, non-regulation
invites chaos and charlatans.
But not computers … right?
In EU countries, regulation of HIT is becoming uncontroversial.
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Sweden's Medical Products Agency’s** “Working Group on Medical
Information Systems: Project summary"
http://www.lakemedelsverket.se/upload/foretag/medicinteknik/en/Medical-InformationSystems-Report_2009-06-18.pdf
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... It is becoming more common that electronic patient record systems and other systems are
interconnected, for instance imaging systems or laboratory systems. It is obvious that such systems
should not be regarded as “purely administrative”; instead they have the characteristic features that
are typical for medical devices. They sort, compile and present information on patients’ treatments
and should therefore be regarded as medical devices in accordance to the definition.
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Patient record systems have crucial impact on patient safety, and this has been proven to be the
case after a series of incidents that has been reported to the Swedish National Board of Health and
Welfare.
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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 FDA and Sweden's Medical Products Agency have agreements on information sharing and
are not strangers.
The good, the Bad and the Ugly
What are the threats from this Experimental “Wild West” Technology?
The “good” (very relative term):
(Predictable, known, preventable)
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Incur high costs that can threaten financial viability of your practice.
Cause large, wasteful transfers of wealth from the healthcare sector to the IT sector, especially when
problems occur. $100 million for an EHR?
Benefits to payers far outweigh benefits to clinicians.
Unauthorized disclosure of personally identifiable medical information - computers insecure as a rule.
System failure and malfunctions, yielding wrong results, wrong orders, lost orders, and other data
discrepancies.
Billing errors that you have to “eat”
Information overload ---> mistakes
Wasted time that could be used for other purposes, especially if IT presents a mission hostile user
experience
Distraction from patient interaction
Legal issues - eDiscovery (outputs may differ from what you saw on screens at time of care), liability for
outcomes affected by system errors, alerts that are ignored, etc.
Effects on medical education - cut & paste instead of doing careful H&P
Over-reliance on others’ data and tests
Documentation errors that would not occur on paper (e.g., cut and paste of old data), entry into wrong
patient record etc.
The bad (and why the “good” is unlikely to disappear soon).
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An unlikely HIT leadership, and attitudes of the facilitators: hospital and vendor
IT personnel. Are these MIS “data processing” cultural relics clinicians’ friends, or
their enemies?
Hollerith programmable tabulator, 1932
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"I think that physicians bring a certain aspect to the job, but I don’t think they necessarily know how a hospital
works. I think they know how their practice works and how they interact with the hospital, but I don’t think they
absolutely know what nursing does, or any of the ancillary departments, and what they do." - CIO, Florida
Hospital
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I’d like to think that I could run any of the departments in this hospital … A very good friend of mine in another
hospital — he’s the CIO there — runs the pharmacy down there. Another friend of mine who’s a CIO runs the
home care division (CIO, N. Carolina)
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I don't think a degree gets you anything," (healthcare IT recruiter). "There's nothing like the school of hard
knocks." (another recruiter). Clinical experience does not yield hospital IT people who have broad enough
perspective. Physicians in particular make poor choices for CIOs. They don't think of the business issues at
hand because they're consumed with patient care issues.” (another recruiter).
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Doctors who don’t like the clinical systems we install are just having a “pissing contest” with us. (health IT
worker, anonymous location).
The bad (cont.): IT territorial nonsense
???
The ugly
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Control of physicians and healthcare
– He who controls the data controls the playing field.
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Erroneous metrics creating perverse incentives
– Comparative effectiveness research based on uncontrolled EHR data. (“Syndrome
of Inappropriate Overconfidence in Computing: An Invasion of Medicine by the
Information Technology Industry?”, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons,
June 2009, link). Where are the CER studies on this type of CER compared to
clinical trials?
– "Beginning in 2015, payment [under Medicare] would be reduced by five percent if
an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of
national utilization." Thus, in any year in which a particular doctor's average perpatient Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the
doctor's payments by 5 percent."
Recommendations (1)
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Let’s get our heads out of the sand (and other places) and fully apply the
rigor and appropriate skepticism of medical science itself to health IT. The
absence is a major failing in the health IT field. (Would you prescribe drugs
with such an equivocal track record?)
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End the syndrome of irrational exuberance and inappropriate overconfidence in
computers. There are no cybernetic miracles.
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If must adopt health IT, use utmost rigor and skepticism, as if buying a used
car.
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Get professional help, especially from those with healthcare informatics
education.
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Support and push for formal regulation of health IT quality and efficacy,
scientific evaluation of dangers.
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Report all adverse events associated with health IT to the FDA via their
adverse events website (as you would with a drug AE) or via a letter to the
Commissioner. Also consider reporting to your elected representatives.
Recommendations (2)
• (Most of) you are not medical residents anymore. Don’t
passively accept abuses from The Chief, from the CIO, or IT
personnel who patronize you, know “better than you” what you
need to practice medicine, or act like they are the enablers rather than the facilitators - of care delivery.
• HIT should not be coerced. Voice your opinion to Congress,
Health Departments, Joint Commission, and others. SLOW
DOWN!
• Consider delaying adoption, up to the point of incurring
penalties after 2014 as best of bad situation, until the
government and technologists are ready to become true clinical
partners, not “overlords.” Let the industry learn how to “do HIT
well” at their own expense.
Final thoughts
•
Electronic health records systems can facilitate (not revolutionize!)
medicine when DONE WELL, especially when led by competent
experts cross-trained to a meaningful extent (i.e., graduate level or
beyond) in clinical medicine, information science and IT. (When done
poorly, results will match.)
•
Even these professionals must often expend much effort in "managing
the mismanagement" by hospital and IT leadership and vendors. Help
them!
•
Be part of the solution. Learn more about Healthcare Informatics.
•
My Drexel U. site “Contemporary Issues in Medical Informatics:
Common Examples of Healthcare IT Failure” is at
www.tinyurl.com/hit-misadventure .
•
I write on health IT at the “Healthcare Renewal” weblog of the
Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine (FIRM) at
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com as well.
“Short” Reading List
Healthcare Renewal blog: http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com
Health IT Project Success and Failure: Recommendations from Literature and an AMIA Workshop. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Bonnie Kaplan and Kimberly D.
Harris-Salamone.
Joint Commission: Sentinel Events Alert on HIT, Dec. 2008.
National Research Council report. Current Approaches to U.S. Healthcare Information Technology are Insufficient. Computational Technology for Effective Health Care: Immediate Steps and
Strategic Directions, Jan. 2009
The National Programme for IT in the NHS: Progress since 2006, Public Accounts Committee, January 2009. Summary points here.
Common Examples of Healthcare IT Failure (website). S. Silverstein, MD, Drexel University College of Information Science and Technology.
Health Care Information Technology Vendors' "Hold Harmless" Clause - Implications for Patients and Clinicians, Ross Koppel and David Kreda, Journal of the American Medical Association,
2009; 301(12):1276-1278
Finding a Cure: The Case for Regulation And Oversight of Electronic Health Records Systems, Hoffman and Podgurski, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 2008 vol. 22, No. 1
Failure to Provide Clinicians Useful IT Systems: Opportunities to Leapfrog Current Technologies, Ball et al., Methods Inf Med 2008; 47: 4–7,
IT Vulnerabilities Highlighted by Errors, Malfunctions at Veterans’ Medical Centers, JAMA Mar. 4, 2009, p. 919-920.
Unexpected Increased Mortality After Implementation of a Commercially Sold Computerized Physician Order Entry System, Han et al., Pediatrics Vol. 116 No. 6 December 2005, pp. 1506-1512
Role of Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems in Facilitating Medication Errors. Ross Koppel, PhD, et al, Journal of thae American Medical Association, 2005;293:1197-1203
Hiding in Plain SIght: What Koppel et al. tell us about healthcare IT. Christopher Nemeth, Richard Cook. Journal of Biomedical Informatics. 38 (4): 262-3.
Workarounds to Barcode Medication Administration Systems: Their Occurrences, Causes and Threats to Patient Safety, Koppel, Wetterneck, Telles & Karsh, JAMIA 2008;15:408-423
The Computer Will See You Now, New York Times, Armstrong-Coben, March 5, 2009,
Bad Health Informatics Can Kill. Working Group for Assessment of Health Information Systems of the European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI).
Electronic Health Record Use and the Quality of Ambulatory Care in the United States. Arch Intern Med. 2007;167:1400-1405
"Dutch nationwide EHR postponed: Are they in good company?", ICMCC.org, Jan. 24, 2009
"The failure rates of EMR implementations are also consistently high at close to 50%", from Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Health Information Management Research –
iSHIMR 2006
Adverse Effects of Information Technology in Healthcare. This knowledge center presents a collection of information on the adverse effects of information technology in its application to
healthcare. It also references sources of information on information security, and related media reports.
Pessimism, Computer Failure, and Information Systems Development in the Public Sector. Shaun Goldfinch, University of Otago, New Zealand, Public Administration Review 67;5:917-929,
Sept/Oct. 2007