Well, from me actually, but she agrees with my assessment.
I believe one unfortunate "legacy" of Blumenthal's tenure is the near total absence of consideration of HIT risk.
Risk to patient life and limb.
As I wrote here, the PCAST report itself reflects the same systematic Pollyanna attitude.
My comments about the PCAST report are simple and twofold:
1. The term "risk" is absent from the PCAST report in the context of risk to patients from clinical IT. Instead, the context is largely about the risk to patients of NOT having health IT.
2. The term "safety" is similarly absent in the context of adverse effects of HIT, and only present in the context of how HIT will improve safety, except for one reference (indeed, the match to my search for the term "safety" was in the cited URL itself) ...
... I find this paucity of a certain context for these terms in a report to the President of the United States striking, and think the issue should have been a top ONC priority.
Instead, Blumenthal spoke only with certainty about the benefit of health IT (see my post "Science or Politics? The New England Journal and "The 'Meaningful Use' Regulation for Electronic Health Records") ...
The widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States is inevitable. EHRs will improve caregivers� decisions and patients� outcomes. Once patients experience the benefits of this technology, they will demand nothing less from their providers. Hundreds of thousands of physicians have already seen these benefits in their clinical practice. (NEJM 10.1056/NEJMp1006114, July 13, 2010) ...
... and about the "anecdotalness" of reports of risk (see my May 2010 post "David Blumenthal on health IT safety: nothing to see here, move along"):
... [Blumenthal's] department is confident that its mission remains unchanged in trying to push all healthcare establishments to adopt EMRs as a standard practice. "The [ONC] committee [investigating FDA reports of HIT endangerment that FDA's head of CDRH said were likely the "tip of the iceberg" - ed.] said that nothing it had found would give them any pause that a policy of introducing EMR's could impede patient safety," he said.
It's a hard job, but he could have done better.
This is a harsh pronouncement, but my mother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in May 2010 as a result of the technology's interference with her care - sadly and ironically, just days after my May 2010 posting cited above about ONC's Pollyanna attitude towards HIT risk.
This injury nearly cost her her life and she is still suffering from its aftermath. This was despite my explicit written warnings of EHR deficiencies that could result in patient harm to the hospital in question in April 2010, a month before the accident, and where I am well known.
The cavalier atmosphere set by ONC regarding HIT risk (i.e., "nothing to see here") certainly did not help the hospital heed the warnings of a medical informaticist who was also one of its former staff.
-- SS
Addendum:
This MAUDE report was submitted to FDA by me based on another EMR-related incident during my mother's time in extremis. This EMR problem almost caused her dire situation to become worse, and was prevented only because I was present at the time and a physician myself, with a physician's knowledge of drug nomenclature.
Along with other EMR mishaps during my mother's continuing, difficult course (such as I wrote about in my Jan. 2011 post "EHR Problems? No, They're Merely Anecodotal; the Truth Must Be That I Attract Bad Electrons and Stale Bits"), Blumenthal would probably call these matters "anecdotal."
One wonders if he would do so if the victim had been his mother, not mine.
-- SS
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