How Institutional Conflicts of Interest Exacerbate the Anechoic Effect - the Example of ASCO Fearing "Biting the Hand that Feeds You"

American Society of Clinical Oncology anechoic effect conflicts of interest health care prices institutional conflicts of interest medical societies You heard it here first

How Institutional Conflicts of Interest Exacerbate the Anechoic Effect - the Example of ASCO Fearing "Biting the Hand that Feeds You"

Unknown 6/27/2015 Komentar

As we recently discussed (here, here, here and here), in May, 2015, the New England Journal of Medicine, arguably the world's foremost medical journal, published an editorial and a three-part commentary arguing that current concerns about the effects of financial conflicts of interest (COI) on health care are overblown(1-4).  On June 1, the Wall Street Journal published a report on the 2015 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) that provided a vivid example of why these concerns should not be dismissed.

Questioning Drug Prices at the ASCO Meeting

The main issue in the article was:

In a sign of growing frustration with rising drug prices, a prominent cancer specialist on Sunday sharply criticized the costs of new cancer treatments in a high-profile speech at one of the largest annual medical meetings in the U.S.

'These drugs cost too much,' Leonard Saltz, chief of gastrointestinal oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said in a speech heard by thousands of doctors here for the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The notion that health care prices are high and are rising continuously in the US should hardly be novel for regular Health Care Renewal readers.  We have been writing about it for a while, starting in 2005.

We first posted about high drug prices in July, 2005, with the example of BilDil.  This was a brand-name combination drug that included two compounds that were already cheaply available in generic form, advertised as a uniquely convenient therapy for congestive heart failure.  We were aghast that the price of the combination drug might be $5.40 - $10.80 a day (in 2005 dollars), over three times the cost of the two drugs in generic form.

But only a few days later we noted that three cancer costs had yearly costs in the five figures, and one, Erbitux, cost as much as $100,000.  Most amazingly we noted that Thalidomid was priced at $25,000  a year.  Yet it was just the infamous thalidomide, the drug initially marketed as a tranquilizer that caused severe birth defects after it was initially sold in Europe.  The drug was still available in generic form in South America for about seven cents a pill.

Since then, the ridiculously high prices of many tests and treatments, but most notably new drugs and devices, has been so widely covered our discussion has been limited to special cases.   For example, consider just a few headlines from April to May, 2015.

How Much Would You Pay for an Old Drug? If You Have MS, a Fortune (Bloomberg)

Pharmaceutical Companies Buy Rivals' Drugs, Then Jack Up the Prices (WSJ)

How Marketing Exclusivity Led to Higher Drug Costs and Questionable Benefits (WSJ)

Runaway Drug Prices (NY Times)


Drug Prices as a Taboo Topic

However, despite this wide attention to the problem, the speech at ASCO was notable.  Back to the WSJ...

Dr. Saltz’s speech was unusual because it was made at the meeting’s plenary session, where the field’s most significant scientific research is presented and which all meeting participants are expected to attend. An estimated 25,000 doctors and scientists attended this year’s meeting.

One would think that the high price of drugs, especially cancer drugs, would be a fit subject for discussion at a plenary session of ASCO, however,

It is unprecedented for plenary speeches, which typically address scientific and medical issues, to substantially take on the topic of drug costs, said Alan Venook, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco who planned the meeting’s scientific session and invited Dr. Saltz to speak.

The prominent venue for the speech was also unusual because, like many medical meetings, ASCO is sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and often focuses on highlighting advancements in drug development, said Dr. Venook. He said discussing drug prices there is 'uncomfortable' because it could be seen as 'biting the hand that feeds you.'

Doctors are also reluctant to antagonize the drug industry because they need pharmaceutical firms to invest in developing new medicines for patients, he said.

'It’s a tough balancing act for ASCO where the meeting is largely funded by pharma,' Dr. Venook said in an interview. 'You can’t have a [plenary] talk trashing pharma, but you can have a talk by a respected person questioning it.'

So because pharma gives ASCO a lot of money, at best, only the most distinguished ASCO members can gently question pharma, but cannot criticize, much less "trash" the source of their mammon.


This is thus a succinct example of why financial conflicts of interest in medicine and health care can be bad.  The incredibly high prices of cancer drugs should be a fit topic for discussion at a meeting run by a society of medical oncologists.  But those in charge of the meeting and the society are afraid to initiate such a discussion, and even more afraid of appearing to criticize the companies that charge these prices, because the society has become dependent on money from these very same companies.  So this is further an example of how conflicts of interest can create the anechoic effect - the notion that certain topics in medicine and health care are taboo, because discussing them might trouble the powers that be, and particularly the moneyed interests that now dominate medicine and health care. 

In a succinct response to the NEJM series (1-4) soft pedaling concerns about conflicts of interest, the British Medical Journal ran a commentary by a former NEJM national correspondent, and two former NEJM editors.(5)  It stated,

The NEJM has now sought to reinterpret and downplay the importance of conflicts of interest in medicine by publishing articles that show little understanding of the meaning of the term. The concern is not whether physicians and researchers who receive industry money have been bought by the drug companies, as Drazen writes, or whether members of guideline panels or advisory committees to the US Food and Drug Administration with ties to industry make recommendations that are motivated by a desire for financial gain, as Rosenbaum writes. The essential issue is that it is impossible for editors and readers to know one way or the other.

In this case, we seem not to be talking about the possibility that health care professionals "have been bought by the drug companies,"  but how drug companies essentially "buying" a professional organization has apparently heretofore prevented medical professionals from discussing a vital issue that could have major effects on patients.

Following the Money

In case there is any question about the money involved and its sources, one only needs to go to some publicly available in formation supplied by ASCO (mostly because of reporting requirements imposed on all US non-profit organizations of a certain size).  

The latest (2014) annual report from ASCO reveals that the organization only gets 16.1% of its revenue from member dues.  Thus a ostensible membership organization gets only about a sixth of its funding from members' dues.

Yet the organization has become quite wealthy.  Its most recent (2013) US Internal Revenue Service 990 Form reveals that it owns over $55 million in real estate, and has over $104 million in investments (presumably as an endowment.)  The organizations' leaders are also doing very well. Its CEO, Allen Lichter MD, got $804,775 in total compensation in 2012.  Eleven other managers, of which three are health care professionals (one MD, one RN, one PharmD), got at least $220,000 in total compensation.  Five of them got more than $300,000. 

The source of all that money seems mainly to be pharmaceutical and other health care corporations that sell goods and services for cancer care.  US non-profit organizations are not forced by law to reveal the details of their financial support.  However, the ASCO annual report does list 23 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and one for-profit cancer hospital chain as contributing at least $1 million each in total to the non-profit over time.  The report lists 37 pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies as current corporate donors, and also 10 other for-profit health care related corporations as current corporate donors.

In addition to these apparently marked institutional conflicts of interest, ASCO leaders may have their own individual conflicts of interest.  I do not have the resources to search all relationships affecting meeting organizers and ASCO officers and trustees, and the organization does not post conflicts of interest affecting its leadership and governance in a prominent place. However, Dr Alan Venook, who confessed to his discomfort about inviting a talk that might be perceived as biting the hand that feeds the finances of ASCO, is or has been on advisory boards for Thershold Pharmaceuticals,  Mirna Therapeutics, and GlobeImmune.  For a 2014 presentation, he gave the following disclosures: "Research support from Genentech/Roche, BMS, Lilly, Novartis; H. Lenz: Consulting, advisory boards and research support from Genentech/Roche, BMS and Merck."  Furthermore, the current chair of the ASCO Board of Directors, Julie M Vose, MD, is also on the Medical Advisory Board of EmergingMed Inc, and the Clinical Advisory Board of Bullet Biotechnology.

Summary

The New England Journal of Medicine recently launched a counter-attack against the "pharmascolds" who are allegedly slowing the pace of medical progress by their excessive and puritanical concerns about financial conflicts of interest.  Yet the arguments that COIs could be bad for health care are logical, and based on at least some reasonably good evidence.  (See the article by Steinbrook et al in the BMJ mentioned above[4], the accompanying BMJ editorial[5] just to start and then the 2009 Institute of Medicine report.)

Moreover, we have encountered a lot of vivid cases suggesting that conflicts of interest can have adverse influences on health care.  In this most recent one, we see at least one prominent if conflicted organizational insider admitting that institutional, and perhaps individual conflicts of interest have made discussion of at least one big health care and health care policy topic taboo.  This seems to corroborate our previous discussion that the anechoic effect - that certain topics in health care are taboo - may be generated by conflicts of interest of the people who ought to discuss them, or of those to whom those people may have to answer.

True health care reform requires full disclosure of conflicts of interest for honesty's sake, and marked reduction of conflicts affecting those who make health care decisions on behalf of individual patients, and health care policy decisions that affect patients' and the public's health.  If we allow conflicts of interest to continue, we will have difficulty even discussing the most severe problems affecting health care, because those generating the topics are benefiting from the circumstances that enable such problems.

ADDENDUM (1 July, 2015) - This post was republished on 28 June, 2015, on the Naked Capitalism blog. 

ADDENDUM (20 July, 2015 ) - This post was republished on July 12, 2015 in OpenHealth News.

References

  1.Drazen JM.  Revisiting the commercial-academic interface.  N Eng J Med 2015; ; 372:1853-1854. Link here.
2. Rosenbaum L.  Reconnecting the dots - reinterpreting industry-physician relations.  N Eng J Med 2015; 372:1860-1864.  Link here.
3. Rosenbaum L. Understanding bias - the case for careful study.  N Engl J Med 2015;  372:1959-1963.  Link here.
4.  Rosenbaum L.  Beyond moral outrage - weighing the trade-offs of COI regulation. N Engl J Med 2015; 372: 2064-2068.  Link here.
5. Steinbrook R, Kassirer JP, Angell M.  Justifying conflicts of interest in medical journals: a very bad idea.  Brit Med J 2015; 350: h2942.  Link here. 
6. Loder E. Revisiting the commercial-academic interface in medical journals.  Brit Med J 2015; 350: h2957.  Link here.

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Childish, petty and vindictive: UPMC hospitals ban sale of Post-Gazette from their gift shops

anechoic effect free speech Pittsburgh Post-Gazette University of Pittsburgh Medical Center UPMC

Childish, petty and vindictive: UPMC hospitals ban sale of Post-Gazette from their gift shops

Unknown 6/25/2015 Komentar

Here's a new angle on how a healthcare organization might react to unfavorable press:

Ban the sale of the newspaper in question from their territory:

UPMC hospitals ban sale of Post-Gazette from their gift shops
June 24, 2015 12:00 AM

http://www.post-gazette.com/business/pittsburgh-company-news/2015/06/24/UPMC-hospitals-ban-sale-of-Post-Gazette-from-their-gift-shops/stories/201506240066

By Steve Twedt / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Some UPMC hospitals are banning the Post-Gazette from sale in their gift shops, a move UPMC spokesman Paul Wood said was precipitated by “fairness issues” in the newspaper’s coverage of the health system.

At least three UPMC hospitals -- UPMC Shadyside, UPMC Mercy and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC -- say they will no longer sell the newspaper.

This seems simply retaliatory and in fact silly, as (at least hopefully) the newspaper will remain on sale in the rest of the city, as well as available online.  That is, assuming UPMC does not go on a vendetta against the newspaper, in its own in-house PR campaigns and mailings, in other media, or in the courts.

Twice in recent years, UPMC executives have canceled the health giant’s advertising in the PG, citing dissatisfaction with the way UPMC was covered in the news pages and how it was portrayed in editorials and editorial cartoons.

One wonders if UPMC has specifically identified false and inaccurate reporting.  Editorial cartoons are also standard fare for newspapers, and if they are not liked, the answer is written response, not banning IMO.

''The Post-Gazette is edited without regard to any special interest, and our news columns are not for sale, at any price,'' said John Robinson Block, publisher of the newspaper. ''We have been here since 1786, and have as our purpose the same goal that UPMC was established for -- to serve the public's interest, not a narrow purpose.''

As pointed out many times at Healthcare Renewal, the purpose of healthcare systems may not entirely be for serving the public's interests anymore.  Rather, they are serving the private interests of a small executive group who reward themselves handsomely for all being such uniformly superb, excellent and deserving managers.

As Roy Poses wrote at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2015/02/outsize-compensation-for-teflon-coated.html, and elsewhere:

... As we have said before, in US health care, the top managers/ administrators/ bureaucrats/ executives - whatever they should be called - continue to prosper ever more mightily as the people who actually take care of patients seem to work harder and harder for less and less. This is the health care version of the rising income inequality that the US public is starting to notice.

Thus, like hired managers in the larger economy, non-profit hospital managers have become "value extractors."  The opportunity to extract value has become a major driver of managerial decision making.  And this decision making is probably the major reason our health care system is so expensive and inaccessible, and why it provides such mediocre care for so much money. 

Back to the newspaper:

... UPMC officials did not respond Tuesday to questions asking which specific stories they found objectionable.

Perhaps anything that does not read like PR from a large advertising firm painting the organization in the finest light, and editorial cartoons showing executive halos....

''We believe that our coverage of UPMC has been fair-minded in every respect,'' said David M. Shribman, the newspaper's executive editor. ''Every entity in every town feels aggrieved at some point by what a good newspaper writes. It's part of living in a free society where the exchange of news and information is prized, not punished.''

It's sad when newspapers have to state the obvious.

But health system officials have often criticized stories, editorials, and editorial cartoons published in the Post-Gazette in recent years, most frequently in its coverage of the ongoing contract battle with insurer Highmark and, in years past, about the health giant's real-estate holdings and its business practices.

The answer to free speech is more free speech.  Colleges and universities are painfully learning this lesson (e.g., see the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Eduction, FIRE, at https://www.thefire.org/).

I actually think a ban on selling the newspaper at UPMC facilities is childish.  UPMC executives seem a bunch of petty, vindictive crybabies for banning sale of the paper from their shops.

-- SS

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The US' Multinational Trade Negotiations - Trading Away Its Own and Other Countries' Current and Future Restraints on Drug Prices?

CMS health care prices Medicare pharmaceuticals regulatory capture revolving doors trade policy US Trade Representative

The US' Multinational Trade Negotiations - Trading Away Its Own and Other Countries' Current and Future Restraints on Drug Prices?

Unknown 6/18/2015 Komentar

Trade Agreements More about Deregulation than Trade

International trade negotiations, especially their more technical aspects, seem far removed from health care and health policy, and unrelated to health care dysfunction.  However, it seems that such trade negotiations have become a back door route to affect health policy, especially national efforts to regulate health care intended to improve patients' and the public's health.  

We recently discussed how current multinational trade negotiations seem to be more about changing regulation in favor of big corporations than broadly advancing trade.  Some of the effects of the proposed trade pacts could have bad effects on patients' and the public's health, particularly by allowing corporations to challenge particular countries' public health policies outside of these countries' judicial systems, in kangarooish courts seemingly designed to favor corporate interests.  Also, the trade pacts' focus on intellectual property could lead to longer patent protection on drugs, biologics, and devices, raising health care costs.  However, attempts to figure out how proposed trade agreements could affect health care and public health were hindered by the secrecy surrounding the negotiations.

"Procedural Fairness" for Pharmaceutical Companies, not You and Me

Earlier in June, 2015, a part of the current draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) appeared on  Wikileaks, revealing yet another set of concerns about how the agreement could affect health care.  It was entitled "Annex on Transparency and Procedural Fairness for Pharmaceutical Products and Medical Devices," and hence was specifically about health care.

The bulk of the annex seemed to be about improving the treatment of drug, device and biotechnology companies by national agencies that make decisions about payments for their products. The annex apparently proposed establishing the companies' rights to rapid reviews, access to applicable procedures and guidelines, access to written decisions, company appeals of the agencies' decisions, and protection of corporate confidential information. On the other hand, there was nothing I could see in the annex about the rights of, say, patients or health care professionals.

We have noted the concern that international trade agreements may make government regulation subject to corporate appeal in "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) processes, essentially international quasi-courts that are not subject to national judicial systems, may not provide for any input by parties other than governments and corporations (that is, by, for example citizens, patients or health professionals), and may not allow appeal.  Thus, by specifically incorporating new protections for corporations seeking favorable payments for their new products from national agencies, the annex could make it possible for the corporations to appeal to ISDS, going around national court systems.  As reported in the Huffington Post,

According to an analysis of the leaked document by Jane Kelsey, a law professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, these rules are enough to expose national health authorities to legal challenges under TPP’s investor-state dispute settlement process, or ISDS. ISDS empowers companies to challenge countries’ domestic laws before a tribunal of international judges if they believe the laws unfairly limit investment. The tribunals have the power to impose significant fines on countries if their laws are found responsible for the investment hardship in question. While pharmaceutical companies could not challenge national health programs’ policies through ISDS, their grievances would be eligible for ISDS if the companies claimed the policies hindered investment.

In fact, the Huffington Post article noted suspicions that the US Trade Representative (USTR) has been negotiating on behalf of big US drug, device and biotechnology companies to target price regulations in Australia and New Zealand,

Among the United States’ TPP negotiating partners, pharmaceutical provisions have faced the greatest opposition from Australia and New Zealand, which have national health authorities that provide prescription drugs to their citizens at heavily discounted rates. The U.S. Trade Representative and U.S. pharmaceutical companies have targeted the cost containment measures in those countries’ prescription drug programs for years. Pharmaceutical companies also claim that New Zealand’s drug approval process is opaque and difficult to navigate.

Why Explicitly Include the US Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)?

However, anyone in the US who thinks that all the burden from the trade pact is only on other countries, particularly those down under, should think again. The draft trade pact annex also seemed designed to prevent any future attempts by the US government to control drug and device costs, especially for the US Medicare program, even though the current US President has proposed such attempts. 

Note that when the US program was extended to cover drugs, the legislation specifically forbade the government from negotiating prices, a provision that seemed more about protecting corporate revenues than the federal budget.  So, as reported by the New York Times,

The newly leaked annex, dated Dec. 17, 2014, lists Medicare and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as falling under its strictures.

The USTR pooh poohed any concerns about that,

Officials at the United States trade representative’s office, while declining to comment on a leak they would not acknowledge, said rules in the Pacific accord would have no impact on the United States because Medicare already adhered to them. The trade representative’s office helped develop the proposals.

'Already, transparency and procedural fairness are integral parts of the U.S. legal system and as such are principles reflected in U.S. trade agreements,' the representative’s office said in a statement.

Maybe preventing any government negotiation about, much less control of drug and device prices may be part of what the USTR called "procedural fairness."  In any case, if the US, and specifically CMS are doing so well, why bother giving this trade pact jurisdiction over them, unless to prevent any uppity future US government from daring to negotiate with the pharmaceutical industry?

The Huffington Post noted that

In an earlier statement, [Director of Public Citizen's Global Access to Medicine Project Peter]  Maybarduk expressed concern that the rules would 'limit Congress’ ability to enact policy reforms that would reduce prescription drug costs for Americans –- and might even open to challenge aspects of our health care system today.'

He expanded on that in a commentary for The Hill,

Earlier this week, WikiLeaks published the draft TPP 'Annex' on healthcare technologies. In the five-page document, the U.S. government commits Medicare to rules and procedures that would make it difficult — if not impossible — to implement a national formulary that would provide leverage for proposed negotiations with drugmakers under Medicare Part D.

Medicare costs are expected to more than double from $77 billion in 2015 to about $174 billion in the next decade. In February, the president called for giving Medicare the power to negotiate prices with drug manufacturers to ameliorate this cost burden. Americans support giving Medicare negotiating power by wide margins and across party lines.

Negotiations are most effective if the U.S. government has leverage. Experts suggest that key leverage in Medicare negotiations should come from developing a national drug formulary — a list of drugs that Medicare would cover. A formulary would stimulate competition, reduce prices and lead to healthier outcomes for patients and the healthcare system.

But the leaked TPP 'Annex' shows that the pact would impose procedural requirements on formulary decisions, exact significant administrative costs and open up the drug review process to increased corporate influence. Medicare would have to live by these rules. The result could be a toothless negotiator, and a formulary filled with expensive drugs that have questionable public health benefits, if any.

Summary

So why did the US Trade Representative acquiesce to, if not actively promote, a trade pact that would limit the ability of the US government, specifically, CMS to try to put a damper on the ever rising health care prices that threaten to bankrupt individuals and maybe eventually the Medicare program itself? And why, incidentally did it do so when this appeared to contradict the current US President's own stated goal to have Medicare negotiate the prices it pays for drugs?  (And why, incidentally, did it promote a pact that would give international tribunals jurisdiction over US government actions when that may be unconstitutional according to an increasing number of experts?) 

The best speculation we offered before was that the USTR has been "captured" by industry, in part through the conflicts of interest generated by multiple passages through the revolving door by current and former USTR personnel. 

At the moment, the TPP has stalled again in the US Congress.  However, do not underestimate the ability of its proponents to get it moving again.  The now intermittent drip of secrets from the ongoing trade negotiations showing how little they have to do with trade, and how much they have to do with advancing corporate interests suggest the need for much more vigilance in defense of patients' and the public's health.

Meanwhile, I repeat again that we need to do a lot more to undo regulatory capture that affects health care, and stop the incessantly spinning revolving door.    Attempts to turn government toward private gain and away from being of the people, by the people, and for the people have no doubt been going on since the beginning of government (and since the Constitution was signed, in the case of the US).  However, true health care reform  would require curtailing the severe sorts of conflicts of interest created by the revolving door.

Real heath care reform would require  multiyear cooling off periods before someone who worked in the commercial world can get a job in a government whose work has direct effect on his or her previous employer or industry sector, and before someone who worked in government whose work had direct effect on a particular economic sector can accept a job for a company in that sector.

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Challenging the meme that [yes, there are all these drastic flaws and problems - BUT] ... EHRs improve patient safety

ACP ECRI Deep Dive Study healthcare IT safety Politico

Challenging the meme that [yes, there are all these drastic flaws and problems - BUT] ... EHRs improve patient safety

Unknown 6/16/2015 Komentar

One of the most persistent memes in healthcare IT is that, for all their deficits, bugs, flaws, interferences in care, and so forth, these systems "improve patient safety."

I find the meme remarkable.

37 medical societies can issue a complaint letter about how EHR systems interfere in care and pose patient risk (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2015/01/meaningful-use-not-so-meaningul.html).  The Joint Commission can issue a detailed Sentinel Event Alert outlining the myriad ways that these systems "introduce new kinds of risks into an already complex health care environment where both technical and social factors must be considered" (http://www.jointcommission.org/assets/1/18/SEA_54.pdf).

ECRI Institute can, year-after-year, report health IT as among the top ten technology risks in healthcare (2015 list at https://www.ecri.org/press/Pages/ECRI-Institute-Announces-Top-10-Health-Technology-Hazards-for-2015.aspx).

This writer can casually aggregate quite a few examples of EHR flaws, risks and harms without really trying very hard (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/glitch).  Some of these include incidents where EHR flaws could have or did affect thousands, a feat nearly impossible with paper (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/11/lifespan-rhode-island-yet-another.html).

Outages that make all records unavailable can occur with regularity (e.g., http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2015/05/another-day-another-ehr-outage-medstar.html).

The ECRI Institute in its "Deep Dive" analysis can gather voluntary reports of 171 IT mishaps in just 9 weeks from 36 hospitals capable of causing harm, with 8 injuries and 3 possible deaths resulting (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/02/peering-underneath-icebergs-water-level.html).

Medical malpractice insurers can reveal an increasing number of medical malpractice cases (and injury) involve EHRs (e.g., http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/02/patient-safety-quality-healthcare.html, also http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/?loc=cases&sloc=norcal, also http://www.msms.org/AboutMSMS/News/tabid/178/ID/2595/System-Dangers-How-EHRs-Can-Contribute-to-Medical-Malpractice-Claims.aspx).

Yet, the "BUT" phrase seems to reliably appear in articles about these flaws:

"BUT" EHRs improve safety.

Of course the comparator in such statements is the paper record.

For instance, in the June 11, 2015 Politico report "Why Health Care IT Is Still on Life Support" (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/electronic-medical-records-doctors-118881.html), Arthur Allen sums up the problems very well such as:

• In surveys, doctors describe the EHR as the biggest cause of job burnout—worse than long hours, billing and other nuisances.  [Burnout is not exactly contributory to patient safety - ed.]
• One frequent complaint is mental strain.
• The doctors can’t tell one patient from another in the absence of idiosyncratic impressions. The memorable rash or symptom a patient reported is buried in screen after screen of seemingly trivial data [what I've called "legible gibberish" on this blog - ed.] In an ER or ICU, with time of the essence, this can become a critical safety problem.
• EHRs are inevitably listed among the 10 top safety concerns for doctors because they introduce new kinds of errors.
• “All the clicking saps intellectual power and concentration and blocks normal conversation."
•  “The computerization of medicine will surely be that long-awaited ‘disruptive innovation,’” but “today it’s often just plain disruptive: of the doctor-patient relationship, of clinicians’ professional interactions and work flow, and of the way we measure and try to improve things.”

Yet with all of the above, the following familiar claim is made about these systems:

• Overall, EHRs are probably improving patient safety—they have replaced illegible medical scrawl with typing, for instance.

At least the word "probably" was used.  Not to single out this article, as the refrain seems commonplace.

I opine in any case that the advantages of occasional handwriting illegibility problem resolved by EHRs are quite thoroughly nullified by critical data being "buried in screen after screen of seemingly trivial data" and other information-clouding issues related to EHR outputs.  See for instance "Two weeks, two reams" at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/02/electronic-medical-records-two-weeks.html.

(Missing in this report, like most others on EHR problems such as the May 2015 American College of Physicians report "Frustrations with EHRs rampant as development slows" (http://www.acpinternist.org/archives/2015/05/EHRs.htm) are mentions of patient harm and deaths.  That topic seems verboten.)

In view of all the above, let me state this clearly:

With the increasing amount of knowledge about the flaws of these systems, coupled with the reports of harms in an environment where our top medical organizations and officials admit that the true rate of harms cannot be known due to inadequate reporting infrastructure, policies, and procedures (see http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/04/fda-on-health-it-risk-reckless-or.html), my belief is that these systems in their present form do not improve patient safety.

My belief is that these systems as they are today decrease patient safety, perhaps markedly, over a reasonably-staffed clinician paper records system. 

To take the enthusiast view is to ignore all of the above.  

For instance, extrapolating the ECRI Deep Dive figures alone is alarming, and to date I have not seen any arguments whatsoever as to why those figures should not be extrapolated.

The situation is only to become worse as more and more hospitals without strong internal expertise increase the complexity of the in-house clinical information systems.

The line that "EHRs increase patient safety" in view of all the problems that are now apparent even to the most hyper-enthusiastic EHR pundit is, I believe, wishful thinking run amok.

Such statements defy common sense.

The need for a very robust reporting mandate on EHR-related close calls and actual harms sorely needed.

It is the only way to know for sure whether we've moved from the occasional paper record-related mishap to a more pervasive EHR-confusion related medical misadventure circus.

Unfortunately, I don't see such mandatory reporting taking place any time soon.  A "health IT safety center" without regulatory authority and receiving HIT mishap reports on a 'voluntary' basis is favored by the industry and its government sponsors (see http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-onc-director-karen-de-salvo-no.html).  A safety center will quite likely be "safely" ignored by the sellers and users of the systems, when it suits their financial interests (which is nearly always).  It is a band-aid solution to a very serious problem.

It seems apparent to me, considering all these problems, that health IT incentives should stop.  Further, new EHR rollouts need to be put on hold until this technology is more thoroughly vetted.  Until then, harms and deaths of patients are in part the fault of those who knew, should have known, or should have made it their business to know of the risks of bad health IT.

-- SS

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The 2015 PharmedOut Meeting

PharmedOut

The 2015 PharmedOut Meeting

Unknown 6/13/2015 Komentar

The 2015 PharmedOut.org meeting is now in the history books.  It featured many presentations and considerable formal and informal discussion about issues relevant to Health Care Renewal, including adverse effects of drugs, manipulation and suppression of research, deceptive marketing, disease mongering, etc.  The schedule is here.  The abstracts are here.  The new PharmedOut.org video makes some of the main points with some irony and humor.  It is available on their main page, and below



The new PharmedOut.org promotional video,

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