Ebola, Electronic Medical Records and Obama Donor Judy Faulkner’s Epic Systems
By Michelle Malkin on October 7, 2014, 8:27 pm

A Dallas hospital’s bizarre bungle of the first U.S. case of Ebola leaves me wondering: Is someone covering up for a crony billionaire Obama donor and her controversy-plagued, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company?

Last week, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital revealed in a statement that a procedural flaw in its online health records system led to potentially deadly miscommunication between nurses and doctors. The facility sent Ebola victim Thomas Duncan home despite showing signs of the disease—only to admit him with worse symptoms three days later.

Hospital officials, who came forward “in the interest of transparency,” initially cited workflow and information-sharing problems for the botch. “Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses,” the statement noted. “However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records interacted in this specific case.”

Mysteriously, after taking special care to get their facts straight before releasing the statement, the hospital backed off a day later. The very specific communications flaw in the medical records software—which apparently had prevented some staff from accessing Duncan’s travel history from Liberia—suddenly disappeared.

What really happened?

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Until recently, health care providers say, the company stubbornly refused to share data with doctors and hospitals using alternative platforms. Now, it charges exorbitant fees to enable the very kind of interoperability the Obama EMR mandate was supposed to ensure.

Another reality check reminder: The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported last year that no one is actually verifying whether the transition from paper to electronic is improving patient outcomes and health services; no one is checking whether recipients of the EMR incentives are receiving money redundantly (e.g., raking in payments when they’ve already converted to electronic records); and no one is actually protecting private data from fraud, theft or exploitation.

In July, The Boston Globe reported that there is still “no safety oversight of the vendors who sell” EMR and EHR systems. One malpractice insurance group revealed that it found 147 cases “in which electronic health records contributed to ‘adverse events’ that affected patients”—46 resulted in death.

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The president-elect of the American Medical Association, Dr. Steven Stack, told Modern Healthcare magazine earlier this month that Epic’s software architecture “often leaves out key information and corrupts data in transit.”

Yikes. Imagine if some of that key data had to do with an Ebola carrier’s travel history. Oh, wait.

http://www.vdare.com/articles/ebola-elec...rs-epic-systems

Quote: ThirstyMan wrote in post #2

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can somebody put this in plain English for me????

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Quote: ThirstyMan wrote in post #4

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All clear! thanks

One question does "Epic" refer to the EMR software or the failure being epic?

Seems I recall Mrs TM is now in training on Epic software for her job as an OT.

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