On EHR's: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil: Part 2

Part 1 is here.This is the second a series of posts I plan on the issue of "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" regarding EHR's.Frequent reminders are needed by all stakeholders, I believe, to think critically about, and take with a big grain of salt, effusive praise by key opinion leaders, politicians, etc. about health IT, and accompanying attempts to deride those critical of the technology, to counterbalance ongoing HIT hyperenthusiasm.The following quote comes from a May 2010 post "David Blumenthal on health IT safety: nothing to see here, move along":Blumenthal, at the time Director of ONC at HHS had reportedly stated that:http://www.massdevice.com/news/blumenthal-evidence-adverse-events-with-emrs-anecdotal-and-fragmented... [Blumenthal's] department is confident that its mission remains unchanged in trying to push all healthcare establishments to adopt EMRs as a standard practice. "The [ONC] committee [investigating FDA reports of HIT endangement] said that nothing it had found would give them any pause that a policy of introducing EMR's [rapidly and on a national scale - ed.] could impede patient safety," he said.The "nothing" includes 44 injuries voluntarily reported to FDA and 6 reported deaths in an enviroment where few know where to report such things and where no reporting requirements exist, and a statement from the head of CDRH at FDA that due to systematic impediments to accurate knowledge the known figures likely are a small fraction ("tip if t...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: ONC= healthcare IT risks David Blumenthal bad health IT See No Evil Hear No Evil Speak No Evil Source Type: blogs