Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Medscape re: Class Action suit: "Doctors Who Sued EHR Company Win First Round"

Interesting article about a Class-Action lawsuit against a health IT seller, Allscripts, see Medscape link below (the story is copyrighted so I cannot repost it here).

Relevant excerpts:

On Monday, March 4, a group of doctors who are suing their electronic health record (EHR) manufacturer for selling them a "buggy" product and then discontinuing it learned that the defendant's motion to block the lawsuit and compel them to accept binding arbitration was overruled by a judge in Miami, the first step in getting a court date in what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind case.

... In December 2012, 4 physician practices -- 2 pain clinics in Florida, 1 in Missouri, and a family medicine practice in Alabama -- became plaintiffs in a class-action suit filed against Allscripts, "an action arising from an expensive, but defective electronic health records software product," according to the complaint. The bottom line: The EHR was "buggy."

Says one of the doctors plaintiffs:

Anesthesiologist Robert J. Joseph, MD, of the Pain Clinic of Northwest Florida in Panama City, a plaintiff in the suit, makes no bones about it. "Our EHR is a piece of crap," he states.

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Link to full article:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/779721

(It seems to come up fulltext without Medscape login, but I cannot guarantee this will persist.)

-- SS

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the company whose former CEO was HIT adviser to President Obama. This case will be a window on the advice he gave Obama that is now being executed by Sebelius and ONC.

Gee, do you think Glen told POTUS that it would be beneficial for the FDA to evaluate the safety and efficacy of these devices?

Steve Lucas said...

Many years ago a company built a product and worried about being sued due to some unforeseen circumstance.

Today a company builds a bad product knowing they will be sued and then calculates the legal cost as part of their profit projections.

The courts have become part of every product’s life cycle, and part of every person’s life, as we try to navigate through a world of every increasing subterfuge.

Steve Lucas