Some inconvenient observations regarding our "National Program for IT in the HHS"

(To astute readers, "National Program for IT in the HHS" is a not-very-thinly-veiled reference to the NPfIT, the National Programme for IT in the NHS, a £12.7bn project that went "pffft.")I have been very concerned  over the years about EHR and other clinical IT risk, and with patient's rights (e.g., to a safe care environment, a legal obligation of healthcare facilities to maintain in the U.S).Looking at the medical malpractice data at my Feb. 28, 2014 post "Malpractice Claims Analysis Confirms Risks in EHRs" (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2014/02/patient-safety-quality-healthcare.html) I make the following observations:1.  Just one Massachusetts medical malpractice insurer, CRICO ("CRICO, a recognized leader in evidence-based risk management, is a group of companies owned by and serving the Harvard medical community", https://www.rmf.harvard.edu/About-CRICO) is reporting that in a year’s worth of medical malpractice claims there were 147 cases in which EHRs were a contributing factor, and that half of the 147 cases resulted in severe injury (which I can almost be certain included deaths).2.  While I am having difficulty locating the total # of medical malpractice cases in Massachusetts annually, the figures are available in a much larger state, Pennsylvania, from our courts at http://www.pacourts.us/assets/files/setting-2929/file-2300.pdf.  The total number of med mal filings in PA for 2012 was 1,508, and that number has been stable since 2009, and ju...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: CRICO Healthcare IT failure healthcare IT risk HIT regulation medical malpractice Source Type: blogs