I wrote up my presentation at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-presentation-to-health-informatics.html and my slide deck is online at http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/HISA2012_Final.ppt.
My message included the following:
- Critical thinking is essential at all times in healthcare ... or your patient's dead.
- Critical thinking is not mindless criticism; on the contrary, it is reflective, inquisitive, logical thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.
- Health IT must be trusted by users and patients [and be free of major downsides] - as a primary step before HIT can optimally benefit healthcare
- I pointed out I am not suggesting anything new and that, in fact, I am suggesting something old: "First, do no harm."
- I pointed out the "revolutions" usually have downsides, and IT always produces winners...and losers (per the empirical research of Social Informatics).
I also asked if health IT was being done well...
I provided links to various evidence that it was not, such as the National Research Council 2009 report on health IT; AMIA's report on its workshop on healthcare IT failure, the 2012 U.S. IOM report on safety, the 2012 U.S. NIST report on usability, work by Australian Professor Jon Patrick of U. Sydney on health IT defects, and other sources as aggregated at this link.
It seems the following organization in Cairns was either absent or not listening, and this debacle is the result.
Just about every point I raised in 2012 was violated or ignored. The story speaks for itself, and I have nothing further to say about it other than this type of scenario is unfortunately still occurring worldwide.
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CAIRNS Hospital’s Digital Hospital program was deemed defective within two weeks of being rolled out with health staff saying it resulted in “significant adverse impacts” upon patient safety and care.
Daniel Bateman
The Cairns Post
September 22, 2016 7:03pm
http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/digital-hospital-resulted-in-significant-adverse-impacts-upon-patient-safety-in-cairns/news-story/be8b025e3d75f91d8ec3288d2c8bed25?nk=79a33b2ae2e9548ce0191dd739db212e-1474736022
The controversial eHealth software program, which went live earlier this year, has been blamed for putting the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service on the path towards its $80 million budget blowout.
The hospital’s board resigned as a result of the gaping deficit on Monday and an administrator is expected to be appointed today.
Results from a staff survey about Digital Hospital leaked to the Cairns Post says the program did not “meet stakeholders’ needs for an intuitive, user-friendly system that supported the provision of personalised patient care at the bedside”.
The report also identifies specimen order and collection workflow as a result of the new system as being “convoluted and time consuming, with significant adverse impacts on patient safety and care.”
Cairns Hospital board resigns
The lack of system testing has been identified by stakeholders as the root cause of continual defects after Digital Hospital went live and the report says there has not been adequate support staff to help with problems.
Senior clinicians raised alarm bells about Digital Hospital earlier this year, warning if the problems were not fixed, it would become a major headache for the health service.
Last Friday hospital board chairwoman Carolyn Eagle described Digital Hospital as a “financial challenge” for the health service.
However, the service’s chief executive Clare Douglas said yesterday the program did not contribute to the 2015/16 budget deficit, nor was it a major contributor to the projected budget deficit for the 2016/17 financial year.
“Queensland Health has committed to the establishment of a digital health system and Cairns Hospital is an important part of that system,” she said.
“We are working to improve and embed the system as part of business as usual.”
She said there were benefits of the program, including visibility and ease of access to patient information.
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That's akin to saying there are benefits to train wrecks. Yes, it gets the tracks and signals fixed. But....
The myth of cybernetic magic is a devilish one, and must be expunged from healthcare if this technology is ever to meet even a fraction of the promises made about it for decades.
-- SS
Addendum: it seems American EHR company Cerner was involved here: https://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/australian-ehealth/2669-iemr-roll-out-at-cairns-hospital-delayed-as-pah-prepares-to-go-live
-- SS
1 comment:
This is not a new problem for hospitals purchasing from this vendor. The vendor has done a remarkable job of covering up. Its partner hospital retaliate against those who complain.
And, it is a beneficiary of the absence of any surveillance of what really happens to patients and their care during months after its device is deployed.
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