Another day, another EHR outage: MEDSTAR EHR goes dark for days

healthcare IT crash healthcare IT outage MedStar Health Patient care has not been compromised Politico

Another day, another EHR outage: MEDSTAR EHR goes dark for days

Unknown 5/06/2015 Komentar

At my March 2, 2015 post "Rideout Hospital, California: CEO Pinocchio on quality of patient care during hospital computer crash" (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2015/03/rideout-hospital-california-ceo.html) I highlighted a stunning example of when the light shone through the corporate B.S. about health IT outages, thanks to a letter to the editor by a family member of an affected patient:

Letter: Re: Rideout Hospital computer problems

http://www.appeal-democrat.com/opinion/letter-re-rideout-computer-problems/article_4a408cc0-be47-11e4-9b7b-93c22da930d4.html 

Friday, February 27, 2015 

I am writing in regard to comments made by the CEO of Rideout Hospital regarding its recent computer crash. 

He said quality of care for patients had not been compromised during this incident. He is lying.

My spouse went to Rideout almost two weeks ago and had a Lexiscan of her heart when the computer system went down. The hospital doctor released her and assured her that if anything were wrong, the radiology department would spot it and she would inform us.

Here it is two weeks later and now they are saying because of the computer problem the entire test didn't get to her cardiologist until today. They think she may have had a minor heart attack and needs further cardiac intervention.

 Is this the new "open and improved" truths we are getting from this hospital? Rideout CEO Robert Chason misinformed us all. 

I am sure my spouse, who has fallen through the cracks during this inexcusable lapse in Rideout's technical policies, is not the only patient suffering similar situations. 

Shame on Chason for minimizing the effects of this catastrophe at our local hospital. 

Edward Ferreira 
Yuba City

I am aware of another major EHR outage via Politico.com:

4/9/15
http://www.politico.com/morningehealth/0415/morningehealth17818.html

MEDSTAR EHR GOES DARK FOR DAYS: MedStar’s outpatient clinics in the D.C. and Baltimore area lost access to their EHRs Monday and Tuesday when the GE Centricity EHR system crashed. The system went offline for scheduled maintenance on Friday and had come back on Monday when it suffered a “severe” malfunction, according to an email from Medstar management that was shared with Morning eHealth.

“All of a sudden the screens lit up with a giant text warning telling us to log off immediately,” a doctor said. “They kept saying it would be back up in an hour, but when I left work Tuesday night it was still down.”

This doctor told us that the outage was “disruptive and liberating at the same time. I wrote prescriptions on a pad for two days instead of clicking 13 times to send an e-script. And I got to talk to my patients much more than I usually do.

But of course we didn’t have access to any notes or medication history, and that was problematic.” MedStar notified clinicians in the email that any information entered in the EHR after Friday was lost.

I do not know if corporate issued the standard "patient safety was not compromised" line, but can almost predict it was uttered somewhere along the line.

MedStar is a big healthcare system.  An outage for several days at its outpatient clinics is disruptive and will lead to harms in the short term, but also in the long term, that cannot be effectively tallied, due to lost information. 

That includes information put on backup paper that fails to get entered when an EHR goes back up, as well as outright computer data loss as occurred here.

Note the doctor's comments about the "liberating" aspect of being freed from health IT.  He/she could actually practice medicine, not computer babysitting.

How many harms will come of this "major malfunction?"  There is no way to know.  However, hospitals cannot have it both ways.  If these systems are touted as improving safety, then safety is affected when they are down and emergency measures are put into place, resulting in chaos; and certainly when information simply goes to the "bit bucket."

The answer?  Either far more redundancy, or far less reliance on "paperless" systems.

There also needs to be mandatory reporting of EHR outages and root cause analysis so the incidence and the reasons can be studied, at the very least.

-- SS

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MBA-holding Informatics Fellow's Portfolio: Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Plagiarism

cerner David Ridley Duke Fuqua School of Bsuiness health care ethics MBA medical ethics medical informatics NextGen plagiarism

MBA-holding Informatics Fellow's Portfolio: Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Plagiarism

Unknown 5/06/2015 Komentar

I highlighted the MBA culture at least once before on this site, on April 16, 2010 at "Healthcare IT Corporate Ethics 101: 'A Strategy for Cerner Corporation to Address the HIT Stimulus Plan'", http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2010/04/healthcare-it-corporate-ethics-101.html.

In that post, I noted MBA candidates/Cerner employees happily conspiring in a paper at Duke's Fuqua School of Business towards combination in restraint of trade through "recommending that Cerner collaborate with other incumbent vendors to establish high regulatory standards, effectively creating a barrier to new firm entry. "

Combination in restraint of trade: An illegal compact between two or more persons to unjustly restrict competition and monopolize commerce in goods or services by controlling their production, distribution, and price or through other unlawful means. Such combinations are prohibited by the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and other antitrust acts.

The paper was highlighted at  professor David Ridley's page "Duke University Fuqua School of Business: Past Papers" - that is, until a few days after my blog post went up and he was informed of it.   You can see cached copies of the paper and page at the post at link above.

Today, I've had another experience with an MBA holder who has decided to enter the field of Medical Informatics.

I received an unsolicited Cc: of an email, sent by a professional in my field I do not know at a university in Australia.  The email was directed at a postdoctoral fellow at a U.S. medical informatics program in the Midwest, advising the fellow that his 'Portfolio' brag page page was plagiarized directly almost verbatim from a personal essay I'd written ca. 1999 and now archived at my current Drexel site at http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/informaticsmd/infordef1.htm, and that plagiarism was bad for informatics careers:

Date: Tue, May 5, 2015 10:28 pm
To: [Name of recipient MBA-holding informatics fellow redacted - ed.]

I was disappointed to find the following three paragraphs on the homepage of your site ([URL redacted] - ed.)

"It became apparent to me and many informatics professionals that significant confusion and misconceptions exist in hospitals, industry, and the world at large about what medical informatics is, and what experts in medical informatics do (and are able to do if given the opportunity). Also, there is confusion as to what medical informatics is not.

"The available quantity of information in most subject areas ("domains") has grown rapidly in recent decades. Issues about information and its use have become quite complex, and the issues themselves have undergone scientific study. Informatics is information science. In other words, informatics is a scientific discipline that studies information and its use.

"Both theoretical and practical issues are studied. Examples of theoretical issues include terminology, semantics (term meaning), term relationships, and information mapping (translation). Practical issues include information capture, indexing, retrieval, interpretation, and dissemination. Medical informatics, an informatics subspecialty, is the scholarly study of these information issues in the domain of biomedicine."

This text is an almost perfect copy of the introduction to Scott Silverstein’s page (http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/informaticsmd/infordef1.htm).

Plagiarism has no place in Medical Informatics, and could harm your career. I would appreciate it if you could rewrite or remove this content on your site

Best Regards 

[Professor name redacted - ed.]

There was other copied material after these paragraphs as well; almost the entire page was my words and ideas.  The page shamelessly concluded with this:

Shamelessly copied from http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/informaticsmd/infordef1.htm#importance

I do not know how the Australian professor detected the plagiarism, if he had involvement with the fellow, or the context of the interaction.

This fellow had an MBA and the title of his "portfolio" page was about his passion for 'revolutionizing healthcare.'

It's clear he thought his stealing my words and ideas would never be noticed. In other words, exploiting my creativity for his own gain and image-enhancement was fine.

Obviously in our connected world, plagiarism is not a good idea. Perhaps not so obvious are the predatory values of the MBA degree and the damaging effects on all our healthcare when such individuals 'revolutionize' it.

I sent a demand for the material's immediate removal along with a polite suggestion of unpleasantness if he does not comply.

I am not naming the postdoc due to having bigger fish to fry.

-- SS

Update 5/6/2015: 

The fellow has removed about 3/4 of my material from the webpage in question, but a passage remains verbatim.

I've sent another request backed by a screenshot and link to my material, and a rather more direct consequence of failure of complete removal.

Between the IT invasion of health IT and the MBA invasion, perhaps patients need to hire fulltime medical advocates for everything more serious then getting a boil lanced.

-- SS

Additional thought 5/7/2015:

I should add the misleading credentials exaggeration of minimal exposure to informatics (a seminar or AMIA short course at best) leading to a claim of a non-existent "American Medical Informatics Certification for Health Information Technology" by an erstwhile NextGen VP who also apparently holds a MBA with a concentration in Health Administration, see http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/02/nextgen-and-vendordoctor-dialog-yet.html.

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Second Order Generic Management: Lobbyist Named CEO of American Hospital Association

American Hospital Association generic management generic managers hospitals non-profit organizations

Second Order Generic Management: Lobbyist Named CEO of American Hospital Association

Unknown 5/06/2015 Komentar

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, hospitals had relatively small administrations, usually lead by a older physician or nurse who served as executive director or superintendent.  Leading a hospital was seen as a calling, not a means to become rich.  With the rise of generic management, hospital management grew, and became dominated by generic managers who were trained as managers, not as health care professionals.

So if hospitals are now usually lead by generic managers, it should be no surprise that hospital organizations are lead by generic managers.  So it should be no surprise that the current CEO of the American Hospital Association, Richard J. Umbdenstock, was formerly " executive vice president of Providence Health & Services and president and chief executive officer of the former Providence Services, Spokane, Washington." (Look here.)

What should be a surprise, however, is what was just reported in Modern Healthcare,

The American Hospital Association has chosen Richard Pollack, its longtime lead lobbyist, to succeed Richard Umbdenstock as CEO. Hospital leaders say Pollack is the right pick, even though he never led a hospital or health system.

Pollack, 59, has been with the AHA for more than three decades and has served as the group's executive vice president for advocacy and public policy since 1991. He will take over the top post in September, the AHA announced Monday during its annual meeting in Washington.

Pollack has developed a sterling reputation for pressing the hospital group's agenda on Capitol Hill and beyond. He's played an integral role in top healthcare policy discussions in recent years, including passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which represents investor-owned hospitals, called Pollack a 'wise Washington hand.'

In addition,

John Rother, president of the nonpartisan National Coalition on Health Care, noted that it's an unusual pick in the sense that Pollack has not overseen a major hospital system. Before joining the AHA, Pollack served as a lobbyist for the American Nurses Association. The Brooklyn native started his professional career in 1977 as a legislative assistant for Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.)

So, the incoming American Hospital Association CEO is not a doctor or a nurse.  He has not had any known direct experience in patient care.  He has no training or experience in public health or biomedical sciences.  Furthermore, he has no direct experience working, even just as a manager, in a hospital or any organization that provides patient care or for the public health.

His entire experience is in Washington, DC, first as a legislative staffer, and then - not to put too fine a point on it - as a lobbyist.

This would make sense if he were going to lead a lobbying firm.  However, the AHA says:

In summer 1995, after regional policy board (RPB) review, the Board of Trustees approved vision and mission statements:

Vision: The AHA vision is of a society of healthy communities, where all individuals reach their highest potential for health.

Mission: To advance the health of individuals and communities. The AHA leads, represents and serves hospitals, health systems and other related organizations that are accountable to the community and committed to health improvement.

So now we have hospitals largely run by generic managers.  Furthermore, hospital associations, whose members are largely represented by generic managers, now may be run by lobbyists, people even more removed from actual health care.  Hence, perhaps too archly, I suggest that Mr Pollack is the first known example of a second order generic manager.

Summary

 In 1988, Alain Enthoven advocated in Theory and Practice of Managed Competition in Health Care Finance, a book published in the Netherlands, that to decrease health care costs it would be necessary to break up the "physicians' guild" and replace leadership by clinicians with leadership by managers (see 2006 post here). Thus from 1983 to 2000, the number of managers working in the US health care system grew 726%, while the number of physicians grew 39%, so the manager/physician ratio went from roughly one to six to one to one (see 2005 post here). As we noted here, the growth continued, so there are now 10 managers for every US physician.

The managers who first took over health care may have had some health care background.  Now it seems that health care managers are decreasingly likely to have any health care background, and increasingly likely to be from the world of finance.  Meanwhile, for a long time, business schools seem to have been teaching managers that they have a God given right to manage every organization and every aspect of society, regardless how little they know about what the particular context, business, calling, etc involves.  Presumably this is based on a faith or ideology that modern management tools are universally applicable and nigh onto supernatural in their powers.  Of course, there is not much evidence to support this, especially in health care.

We have discussed other examples of bizarre proclamations by generic managers and their supporters that seem to corroborate their belief in such divine powers.  Most recently, there was the multimillionaire hospital system CEO who proclaimed new artificial intelligence technology could replace doctors in short order (look here).   Top hospital managers are regularly lauded as "brilliant," or "extraordinary," often in terms of their managerial skills (look here), but at times because of their supposed ownership of all aspects of patient care, e.g., (look here)

They literally are on call 24/7, 365 days a year and they are running an institution where lives are at stake....

As noted above, if the new generic managers work in offices that are physically, intellectually and spiritually distant from the real world of health care, a lobbyist running a hospital association would be at best distant even from the management suite.

It is way past time for health care professionals to take back health care from generic managers.  True health care reform would restore leadership by people who understand the health care context, uphold health professionals' values, are willing to be held accountable, and put patients' and the public's health ahead of self-interest.

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Innovations form the Safra Center Ending iCorruption Conference

conflicts of interest health care corruption hospital systems pharmaceuticals regulatory capture

Innovations form the Safra Center Ending iCorruption Conference

Unknown 5/04/2015 Komentar

I had the pleasure of attending the Ending iCorruption Conference, the capstone conference for the Edmond J Safra Research Lab on Institutional Corruption, held at the Harvard Law School on May 1-2, 2015.  The conference included much material relevant to health care corruption and related topics, and provided some innovative approaches that could be used to address these issues.  I list these below, with citations or links when available.  At some point in the future, all conference proceedings should be available on video from the Safra Center.

Uncovering Data on Conflicts of Interest

Unearth: Using PubMed to Uncover Conflicts of Interest Affecting Clinical Research

Unearth is a browser extension now available for Google Chrome, and soon to become available for other browsers, e.g., Firefox.  It works on PubMed searches, scraping funding and conflict of interest data from the body of articles and adding them to abstracts.  We have often discussed such conflicts of interest, and their relationship to manipulation of clinical research.  Unearth could make such conflicts more salient, making it easier to discriminate unconflicted from conflicted research.  (See this post on the Bill of Health blog.)  This application was developed during the Safra Center Hacking iCorruption Event.

Open Think Tanks: Uncovering Think Tank Funding

Think tanks often publish findings on and make recommendations about health care.  However, think tanks are often opaque, and any institutional conflicts of interest they have may not be easily apparent.  Open Think Tanks currently shows donations from government entities outside the US to US based think tanks.  Enhancements to include various kinds of private donations are likely in the future. This application was also developed during the Hacking iCorruption Event.

Finding Unconflicted Academics

As we have discussed, the majority of medical academics have conflicts of interest, which may affect their research, teaching and patient care.  Yet these conflicts are not always disclosed.  Furthermore, finding experts without conflicts is not easy.  ProfessorCert is a website that allows academics who have no conflicts of interest to register as such.  The website was developed by the Academic Independence Project. 

Improving Integrity

Putting Consumers in the FDA and Other Regulatory Agencies

We have frequently discussed regulatory capture, how government health care regulatory agencies, like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),  often seem to end up more concerned about the financial health of those they are supposed to regulate than patients' and the public's health.   Harvard Prof Daniel Carpenter, collaborator in Safra Center research,  talked about the problem of  "cultural capture" of regulatory agencies, in which the regulators' thinking is influenced by outside vested interests.  He proposed that regulatory agencies need to put consumers, or presumably other stakeholders like unconflicted health care professionals, "into the room."  

Putting Ethicists in the C- Suite

We have frequently criticized the leadership of hospitals and hospital systems.  In particular, we have discussed instances in which these leaders seem to have gone directly against the mission of their own organizations, which we termed mission hostile management. Safra Lab Network Fellow James Corbett, now Senior Vice President for Centura Health, proposed that ethicists who also understand the language of finance and management be present among the top leadership of hospital systems.  

Licensing Executives

As noted above, a major theme of the Health Care Renewal blog is the shortcomings of the leadership of large health care organizations.  Top leaders often have business training, but may be ill-informed about health care, and ignorant or unsupportive of  or even hostile to its values.  Wellesley College Professor Emerita Ann Congleton's 2014 article in the Journal of Business Ethics, entitled Beyond business ethics: an agenda for the trustworthy teachers and practitioners of business, proposed requiring that corporate executives, including executives of health care corporations, be licensed in order to lead their organizations.  I proposed licensing of leaders of large health care organizations as early as 2008 (here).    

Pharmaceutical Research Uninfluenced by the Pharmaceutical Industry

Because clinical research meant to evaluate drugs or devices sponsored by  manufacturers of the relevant products has shown to be frequently manipulated, or even suppressed, many people have suggested banning such sponsorship and direct influence of such manufacturers.  (For example, see the book and blog, both entitled "Hooked," written by Dr Howard Brody, and see Health Care Renewal blog posts, e.g., here.)
Safra Center Network Fellow and Rowan University Professor Donald Light's book in press, Good Pharma, basically offers proof of the concept that high quality clinical research on pharmaceuticals can be accomplished without industry money or influence, albeit in Italy, at the Mario Negri Institute. 

Summary

The project on institutional corruption at the Safra Center produced a burst of innovation meant to address this pervasive project, and thus provided much of value to those who want to challenge health care corruption.  I hope this innovation will turn out to be truly disruptive.  It is regretful that this project has come to an end.  We can only hope others pick up the banner.  

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Pollyanna Rhetoric, Proximate Futures and Realist's Primer on Health IT Realities in 2015

Charlie Jarvis David Blumenthal Edward Ehlinger healthcare IT difficulties healthcare IT myths healthcare IT pollyanna Mark Leavitt proximate future subjunctivisation bias Trisha Greenhalgh

Pollyanna Rhetoric, Proximate Futures and Realist's Primer on Health IT Realities in 2015

Unknown 4/27/2015 Komentar

Pollyanna statements about healthcare IT such as the following are still appearing, and are growing increasingly tiresome.  They are, at best, demonstrations of people with a fiduciary duty to have known better making fools of themselves.

Pollyanna: someone who thinks good things will always happen and finds something good in everything (Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pollyanna)

Examples:

... Before ARRA, most surveys concluded that cost was the No. 1 barrier to EHR adoption. But as soon as it appeared that the cost barrier might finally be overcome, individuals with a deeper-seated "anti-EHR" bent emerged. Their numbers are small, but their shocking claims -- that EHRs kill people, that massive privacy violations are taking place, that shady conspiracies are operating -- make stimulating copy for the media. Those experienced with EHRs might laugh these stories off, but risk-averse newcomers to health IT, both health care providers and policymakers are easily affected by fear mongering.  (Mark Leavitt, former head CCHIT, http://www.ihealthbeat.org/perspectives/2009/health-it-under-arra-its-not-the-money-its-the-message.aspx)

and:

"The [ONC] committee [investigating FDA reports of HIT endangement] said that nothing it had found would give them any pause that a policy of introducing EMR's [rapidly and on a national scale - ed.] could impede patient safety."  (David Blumenthal, former head of ONC at HHS, http://www.massdevice.com/news/blumenthal-evidence-adverse-events-with-emrs-anecdotal-and-fragmented)

and:

"We don't think there's a great deal of data to substantiate that there are major safety problems with the majority of electronic health records systems in use today," said Charlie Jarvis, executive committee vice chair of the EHR Assn., a trade group that represents 46 organizations that supply most of the EMR systems implemented in medical practices. "These products are safe, dependable, time-tested and display a lot of the safety features we think are necessary to prevent problems going forward." (Charles Jarvis, erstwhile NextGen VP and holder of prestigious (and mysterious) "American Medical Informatics Certification for Health Information Technology", http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/two-opposing-views-of-ehr-1.html)

The most recent example highlighted on this blog is:

As Minnesota’s health commissioner, I work to improve the health of all Minnesotans. As a physician, I’m dedicated to providing the best care possible to patients. Secure electronic health records help achieve both goals by enhancing the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of our health care system. With that in mind, I have been concerned to see some recent pushback on Minnesota’s requirement that all health care providers use electronic health records (EHR) by 2015 ... All Minnesota patients, whether they visit a small clinic, need mental health treatment, or receive care from multiple providers, stand to benefit from EHRs and the improved care coordination they make possible. (Minnesota's Heath Commissioner Dr. Edward Ehlinger, http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2015/04/electronic-health-records-advance-quality-care-all-minnesotans.)

Here is the tragic reality.

Recommended for reading, and for feeding to the press and to our elected officials:

Primer on health IT realities in 2015:

-------------------------------------------------

(1)  "Five biases of new technologies", Trisha Greenhalgh.  Br J Gen Pract. 2013 Aug; 63(613): 425
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3722815/

The most dangerous of these biases is the "subjunctivisation bias".  It results in clinical disruption, mishaps, injury and death:

Subjunctivisation bias: Much of the policy rhetoric on new technologies rests not on what they have been shown to achieve in practice but on optimistic guesses about what they would, could, or may achieve if their ongoing development goes as planned; if the technologies are implemented as intended; and in the absence of technical, regulatory or operational barriers.⁴ This is what Dourish and Bell call the ‘proximate future’: a time, just around the corner, of ‘calm computing’ when all technologies will be plug-and-play and glitch-free.

(I point out a related bias - that of the hyper-enthusiastic technophile who either deliberately ignores or is blinded to technology's downsides, ethical issues, and repeated local and mass failures.  See http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/03/doctors-and-ehrs-reframing-modernists-v.html.)

(2)  ECRI Institute Deep Dive Study on Health IT risks (2012)
http://www.healthit.gov/facas/sites/faca/files/STF_Deep_Dive_Health_Information_Technology_2014-06-13.pdf

171 IT mishaps sufficient to cause harm reported voluntarily by 36 hospitals in 9 weeks; 8 injuries; mishaps likely contributed to 3 deaths as well.  Projected to a nationwide annual figure, the result is likely many thousands of times greater (see http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/peering-underneath-icebergs-water-level.html).

(3)  Letter to ONC from 37 Medical Societies (January 2015)      
http://mb.cision.com/Public/373/9710840/9053557230dbb768.pdf

This letter speaks for itself on exceptionally well-justified clinician dissatisfaction and alarm at the risks and disruptions posed by this technology in its current form and with present roles (e.g., the experimental use of clinicians as cheap data entry clerks).

   
(4)  Joint Commission Sentinel Events Alert on Health IT (March 2015)   
http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/SEA_54.pdf

Late, but better than never.  Most of what's in this alert has appeared on this blog since 2004.   Footnote 1 (ECRI Institute PSO Deep Dive, the report linked above) is somewhat bizarrely used as a justification of the statement "EHRs have demonstrated the ability to reduce adverse events."  I do also note at the linked http://www.jointcommission.org/safe_health_it.aspx these statements:

• Poorly designed or implemented health IT can contribute to patient harm
• Health IT-related patient safety events can go undetected
• As health IT adoption becomes more widespread, the potential for health IT-related patient harm may increase

These could have come directly from my writings dating back over a decade here.  (Perhaps they did.)

(5)  Accenture - Fewer U.S. Doctors Believe It Improves Health Outcomes (April 2015)                    
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150413005148/en/Increased-Electronic-Medical-Records-U.S.-Doctors-Improves#.VT5bmpOTqUk

This survey also speaks for itself.  A less formal nurses' survey is here:  http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/candid-nurse-opinions-on-ehrs-at.html

(6)  U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9SR15pp-ucgkJH_vLA51JhLCkVDonFUTN-eqy5H4q35QbjlLCVfSVafNsao6hpg04nn7DP8yaes9rYl-npuIRspFX7fjOKXjhSMCCRbEwwgqfeOxTPvbY8JoSno2VSknCtCZrppXoClwo/s1600/CMS_Letter.jpg

FOIA response:  "We do not have any information that supports or refutes claims that a broader adoption of EHRs can save lives."  (But let us spend hundreds of billions of dollars and put patients at risk to find out...)

CMS: "we do not have any information that supports or refutes claims that a broader adoption of EHRs can save lives.  [Click to enlarge.]

In conclusion:

Next time you encounter pollyanna/head-in-the-sand statements about health IT that ignore the risks, throw this primer the way of the authors and audience of such statements.

-- SS

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