patient safety

Congressional leaders blasted the lack of interoperability between different vendors' electronic health records systems, Politico reports. The harshest criticism came from "Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), who charged that Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems, the leading EHR company, was operating 'closed platforms' that did not allow information to easily flow into and out of its electronic health records systems," Politico further reports. Epic is the most highly used electronic health record system, Politico also reports.

The issue of interoperability is a big one with electronic health records: if different systems can't talk to each other, then patients can't benefit from having information that is portable between different healthcare providers or readily available if they need emergency care while traveling.

ProPublica reports on a little-covered problem: some people harmed by medical malpractice can't find any attorneys to take their cases.

This is a phenomenon that many plaintiffs lawyers told me about when I was regularly reporting on medical-malpractice litigation for The Legal Intelligencer. Med mal cases are very expensive to work up because they require expert witnesses and scientific-oriented discovery, and many firms will not take cases in which the injury is less catastrophic or their are low economic damages because the return on investing in the case is so low.

ProPublica reports on the "problem faced by many who are harmed in a medical setting: Attorneys refuse their cases, not because the harm didn’t happen but because the potential economic damages are too low." This includes the elderly who have low incomes because they are retired, because their medical bills are picked up by Medicare and they typically have no dependents, ProPublica further reports.

Electronic health records are being incentivized in health law, regulations and funding on the rationale they'll improve patient care and other goals. But a recent Pennsylvania study showed that default values within such systems can lead to mistakes in caring for patients: 

"Using default values in electronic health records can boost efficiencies and standardization, but can cause adverse patient safety events when used improperly, according to a new advisory issued by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority."

Read more: Inappropriate use of EHR default values harms patients - FierceEMR http://www.fierceemr.com/story/inappropriate-use-ehr-default-values-harm...
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