medical errors

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Doctors' Dissatisfaction With EHRs May Be 'Early Warning Of Deeper Quality Problems'

Susan Jones | CNS News | October 18, 2013

Electronic health records are a source of frustration to many physicians, according to a study on physician satisfaction sponsored by the American Medical Association. Read More »

DoD: New EHR not about interoperability with VA

Tom Sullivan | Healthcare IT News | July 30, 2015

When Defense Department officials briefed reporters prior to announcing that the Cerner, Leidos and Accenture team won its EHR modernization contract, they were adamant that so much speculation about the DoD’s ability to share patient information with the Department of Veterans Affairs had been unfounded. "There is not a big interoperability problem with the VA and DoD today," said Frank Kendall, DoD Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. "It’s a big misconception out there that this software system we’re buying is about interoperability." Read More »

Dr. Don Berwick: Medical Error Is The Third Leading Cause Of Death In The US

Tori Bedford | WGBH News | May 5, 2016

The two most common causes of death in the United States are medical: heart disease and cancer, respectively. According to a new study, the third cause could also be medical—in a terrifying way. According to research published in the British Medical Journal, medical errors in hospitals and other medical facilities could be the third leading cause of death in the U.S., claiming 250,000 lives every year. One of the study’s authors wrote, “it boils down to people dying from the care that they receive, rather than the disease for which they are seeking care”...

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EHR Adverse Events Data Cause For Alarm

Erin McCann | Healthcare IT News | September 5, 2013

Software default values, though implemented for safety, are proving in many cases to be harmful for patients if not used properly Read More »

EHR Defaults Cause Medication, Patient Safety Errors

Jennifer Bresnick | EHR Intelligence | September 5, 2013

The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority’s newest analysis shows troubling news for providers who rely on basic EHR shortcuts such as automatically populated default fields. Read More »

EHR Usability Gaps -- ONC and AHRQ Identify Serious Shortcomings of Certified EHRs

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act provided providers with a significant financial incentive to increase the adoption and use of EHRs. EHR vendors were required to conduct and report on a summative usability evaluation of their system as part of the Stage 2 Meaningful Use program (The ONC 2014 Edition Certification). However, a recent report funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), identified several “issues” with the certified EHR vendors in the processes, practices and use of standards and best practices with regard to usability and human factors.

Electronic Health Records: a “Quadruple Win,” a “Quadruple Failure,” or Simply Time for a Reboot?

Michael Hochman | Journal of General Internal Medicine | February 5, 2018

Just a decade ago, when paper charts were commonplace in the USA, it seemed that electronic health records (EHRs) were destined to transform the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery, as well as the care experience for patients and clinicians...The reality over the ensuring years has, to put it mildly, not met expectations. According to a 2014 analysis led by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information,2 over 80% of US doctors now use EHRs. Yet, many of the predictions about the benefits of EHRs have yet to materialize to the extent predicted. ..Noteworthy concerns include egregious medical errors resulting from design glitches3, charting templates filled extensively with meaningless boilerplate, the common practice of pasting old notes4 that makes it difficult to know which documentation is “real,” “alert fatigue”5 due to excessive EHR warnings, and even reduced communication among clinical team members.6

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Electronic Health Records: First, Do No Harm?

David F. Carr | InformationWeek | June 26, 2014

EHRs are commonly promoted as boosting patient safety, but are we all being fooled? InformationWeek Radio investigates. Read More »

Enhancing Patient Safety And Quality Of Care By Improving The Usability Of Electronic Health Record Systems: Recommendations From AMIA

Blackford Middleton, Meryl Bloomrosen, Mark A Dente, et. al. | JAMIA | January 25, 2013

In response to mounting evidence that use of electronic medical record systems may cause unintended consequences, and even patient harm, the AMIA Board of Directors convened a Task Force on Usability to examine evidence from the literature and make recommendations. This task force was composed of representatives from both academic settings and vendors of electronic health record (EHR) systems. Read More »

Feds Move Into Digital Medicine, Face Doctor Backlash

Laura Ungar and Jayne O'Donnell | USA TODAY | February 1, 2015

"Physicians passionately despise their electronic health records," says Lexington, Ky., emergency physician Steven Stack, the American Medical Association's president-elect. "We use technology quickly when it works … Electronic health records don't work right now."

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Give Us Our Damn Lab Results!!

Alice Leiter and Devon McGraw | The Health Care Blog | September 15, 2013

Two years ago, the Department of Health and Human Services released proposed regulations that would allow patients to obtain their clinical lab test results directly from the lab, rather than having to wait to receive the results from their health care provider.  CDT and other consumer groups enthusiastically supported this proposed rule at the time of its release. Read More »

Good Health IT vs. Bad Health IT

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 26, 2013

The title of Dr. Scot Silverstein's teaching website at Drexel University, “Contemporary Issues in Medical Informatics: Good Health IT, Bad Health IT, and Common Examples of Healthcare IT Difficulties,” summarizes the veteran physician informaticist's general outlook on the current state of affairs in health information technology. It tells you nothing, however, of the passion with which Silverstein speaks or writes about the subject. Read More »

Growth Of SMART Health Care Apps May Be Slow, But Inevitable

Andy Oram | O'Reilly Radar | September 13, 2012

This week has been teaming with health care conferences, particularly in Boston, and was declared by President Obama to be National Health IT Week as well. I chose to spend my time at the second ITdotHealth conference, where I enjoyed many intense conversations with some of the leaders in the health care field [...]. Read More »

Guess What: Docs Don't Like EHRs

It's kind of "dog-bites-man" type news, but there is even more evidence that physicians not only don't think EHRs are helping them but actually see them as contributing to burnout. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic found that use of EHRs (or computerized physician order entries -- CPOEs) was associated with lower satisfaction with time spent on clerical tasks, with nearly half of physicians saying the amount of time spent on clerical tasks was unreasonable.  No wonder the AMA CEO recently complained that physicians were turning into the "most expensive data entry force on the face of the planet."

Hazards Tied to Medical Records Rush

Christopher Rowland | Boston Globe | July 20, 2014

Subsidies given for computerizing, but no reporting required when errors cause harm

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