subject: Health It Poses Potential Threat To Patients And Doctors [print this page] In recent years, healthcare providers across the country have embraced Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) as the solution to many of the problems facing the medical community - specifically rising costs, administrative inefficiency, and medical errors. And it's true that replacing paper charts, medical forms, and insurance claim forms with an integrated electronic records system can save time and money in hospitals, clinics, and medical practices. Both former President Bush and President Obama have encouraged and promoted the widespread adoption of EMRs, and current estimates suggest that paper records may be history as early as 2014 or 2015. But now government advisors warn that the rapid implementation of EMRs could create unforeseen patient safety problems.
A panel from the influential Institute of Medicine recently released a report entitled "Health IT and Patient Safety: Building Safer Systems for Better Care," which found that the use of health information technology can lead to unintended patient harm, increased malpractice liability, and other serious risks. Concerns have emerged about a wide range of potential problems, from computer crashes to quirky software interfaces. According to the report, these problems can add to challenges to the already-complex medical environments in which physicians, nurses, and other caregivers work. When a clinician needs to make real-time decisions that will affect a patient's wellbeing, and may be life-or-death, this added complexity is not only unwelcome, but may indeed be dangerous.
In the report, the IOM advisors urge the government to create an independent agency dedicated to the investigation of injuries and deaths linked to the safety problems inherent in some (if not all) electronic medical records systems. The IOM found that one of the biggest problems in current Health IT systems is the lack of industry standards. Also problematic is the inadequate tracking of the effectiveness of electronic records systems. Many cases of poorly-written software and unreliable hardware have been reported, and these situations can lead to increased patient safety risks. But so far, no action has been taken on the legislative level to create standard practices and requirements to prevent these issues. According to the IOM report, "the magnitude of the risk associated with Health IT is not known, (but) some examples illustrate the concerns. Dosing errors, failure to detect life-threatening illnesses, and delaying treatment due to poor human-computer interactions or loss of data have led to serious injury and death."
The Obama administration is currently pushing for a complete conversion to electronic records in the next 3 years, as many medical experts have attested to the potential benefits, including the prevention of errors caused by the misreading of prescriptions and other hand-written data, and the automatic flagging of dangerous drug combinations. But several studies show that these benefits are not materializing as quickly and consistently as expected, and the new IOM report suggests that the FDA needs to regulate Health IT in order to ensure a net gain in the performance and efficiency of the American healthcare system.
