HHS claims the benefits of EHRs outweigh risks to patients, but critics argue safety issues are downplayed, according to a USA Today report.
Ross Koppel, PhD — a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who has been published extensively on the issue of EHRs and patient safety in medical journals — claims HHS has selected specific studies and study methods that minimize the number of errors related to health IT.
Highlighted below are eight arguments and examples of research on the issue of EHRs and patient safety, as outlined by USA Today.
1. "Of course, there was a safety problem with paper, but there are new, different and more wicked problems with HIT," Dr. Koppel told USA Today.
2. According to Gary Dickinson, a health IT executive involved in setting EHR standards, every time information is exchanged from one health facility to another, the number of times errors can be introduced increases. He also argued that because electronic systems transform content, physicians can not have much trust in the information.
3. HHS cites a study that was published last summer in the journal Healthcare to back its support of EHRs. The study found adverse drug events increased by 14 percent at hospitals where physicians resisted meaningful use requirements, but dropped by 52 percent at hospitals where physicians met the requirements.
4. When researching how to improve patient care, the ECRI Institute ranked "problems with electronic health records," specifically incorrect or missing data, second among the top 10 health technology hazards.
5. Researchers have analyzed more than a million medication error reports for a study published in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety. They found "computerized provider order entry" was considered a contributing cause in more than 63,000 reports.
6. In 2012, analysts from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority examined EHR-related patient safety reports and found most involved human error in data entry, such as entering the wrong data or failing to enter information.
7. Kathy Kenyon, a senior policy analyst at HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, told USA Today health IT-related events represent a fairly small percentage of all safety-related data issues and can be used to solve problems.
8. Russell Mardon, senior study director charged with reviewing hospital IT errors with HHS, agrees that health IT safety errors are not enormous in number but will become more important as the use of IT increases.
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10 recommendations on how to increase transparency, improve patient safety