EHRs and their Impact on Quality of Care

Headlines this week have provided much confusion in the march towards digitization of healthcare that were based on a Stanford study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine: Electronic Health Records and Clinical Decision Support Systems with a conclusion:

Our findings indicate no consistent association between EHRs and CDS and better quality. These results raise concerns about the ability of health information technology to fundamentally alter outpatient care quality.

Needless to say a strong negative claim from a leading institution attracted a lot fo coverage (Medscape, Reuters, Health Data Management, iHealthBeat,  DotMedNews, Bloomberg…..and the list goes on). The power of the internet and the instantaneous nature of the news allows these stories to rapidly disseminate.

In fact some of this will add fuel to the HR408 Act  Spending Reduction Act of 2011 (the text of this can be found here). It is a far reaching bill attempting to reign in spending to the tune of 2.5 Trillion and includes several elements focusing on repeal of Healthcare IT stimulus spending S:302 which focuses on repealing the HITECH funding and investment – there was a good analysis in Health Data Management GOP Bill Puts Meaningful Use, HITECH Act in Peril that highlights the murky nature of the impact of this legislation.

But the power of the internet works both ways and there are several great articles that apply a sound analytical view on the study and highlight the limitations of the study. In this piece Dr WIlliam Hersh; Electronic Health Records Do Not Impact the Quality of Healthcare takes a long hard look at the study adn as he points out

Like almost all science that gets reported in the general media, there is more to this study than what is described in the headlines and news reports. The study was published in a prestigious medical journal by two Stanford researchers. The implementation of the research methods they used appears to be sound.

But as he points out there are serious limitations to this type of study based on the type of study and the data resources, in particular the study “used a data source collected for other purposes and he highlighted the following limitations:

1. A frequent challenge – the study looks at correlation, which does not mean causality
2. The quality measures used did not provide enough insight into actual quality improvement (process measures vs outcome measures)
3. No detail of the EHR’s being used and if they had any decision support in place relative the the quality measures
4. THe care assessed was individual episodes of care and improvements in actual quality occur over multiple episodes of care (the longitudinal medical record)
5. Data analyzed was old (2005 – 2007) and in any field of technology including Healthcare Informatics this is old
6. No indication of the training and skill set of the clinicians being assessed and success and failure fo EHR’s goes far beyond the technology and is closely tied to implementation and training

And there was extensive discussion that pointed to other articles and studies highlighting the benefits and in particular emphasize how early we are in this process. I imagine that for several other key inventions there was a similar response:

• The Electric light bulb
• Telephone

This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

Western Union Internal Memo: 1876

• Automobile
• Microprocessor
• And even the internet and the world wide web

THis follow up piece by Clem McDonald: Clinical Decision Support and Rich Clinical Repositories: A Symbiotic Relationship that highlighted a range of other positive studies and identifies significant breakdown in the meta analysis that was carried out. As he states succinctly:

• First, and most important, the current article tells us nothing about which CDS guidelines were implemented in the systems that they studied. Practices and EHRs vary considerably in the number and type of CDS rules that they implement, and we do not know whether the CDS rules implemented by the practicesthat participated in the surveys addressed any of the 20 quality indicators evaluated by Romano and Stafford.
• Second, the current study and Garg and coauthors’ review considered very different categories of guidelines. Most of the guidelines (60%) in Romano and Stafford’s study concern medication use; none of them deals with immunizations or screening tests, which were the dominant subjects in the studies reviewed by Garg et al.3 Furthermore, in our experience, care providers are less willing to accept and act on automated reminders about initiating long-term drug therapy than about ordering a single test or an immunization.
• The third difference is that the current study examined the outcome of a single visit, while most of the trials reviewed by Garg and colleagues observed the cumulative effect of the CDS system on a patient over many visits.
• Finally, the data available from NAMCS/NHAMCS may be limited compared with what is contained in most of the EHRs used for Garg and coauthors’ trials. For example, the NAMCS/NHAMCS instruments have roomto record only 8 medications, even though at least 17% of individuals older than 65 years take 10 or more medications.

The road to digitization of healthcare is long and filled with many ups and downs. This study adds the overall knowledge but should be taken in the context of what was studied and its contribution to guiding us down the correct path and not, as some would believe> halting the journey and returning to the dark ages of pen and paper.

Posted via email from drnic’s posterous

Snake Oil from Martha Stewarts Show – Detox Doc

Why these charlatans get any airtime is beyond me……as picked up in Michael’s Minute: Martha Stewart Gets Bamboozled By Detox “Doc” and as he points out: 

it’s simply modern day snake oil salesman 

THe myth that we have such a toxic environment we have to detoxify is preposterous. Not a shred of evidence supporting these claims:

 

There isn’t one scientific report validating any of these claims yet people continue to believe based on the power of personal persuasion. He (Mr Junger) exploits people’s ignorance with flim-flammery tricks and deceit. If detoxification was effective he wouldn’t need shady sales techniques. Instead, there would be scientific studies demonstrating its effectiveness. Mr. Junger should want these tests to validate his beliefs. He resists efforts to measure and verify his treatment because it would be revealed as the scam it is 

You can see the marketing spin in this clip

Why is Martha Stewart allowign such tripe to be broadcast adding wieght to these claims. Don’t get fooled – our water, food  and air is safe and you don’t need to pay any money to someone to detoxify or clean your Insert name of food, air or fluid>

Excellent Meaningful Use Qualification for Incentive Matrix

Great post from Dr Halamka laying out the details of what is required to qualify for meaningful use incentives

http://mycourses.med.harvard.edu/ec_res/nt/36980CA6-E154-4820-A0ED-8B235138B79F/measures.pdf

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Nuance Self Service Mobile Developer Platform Announced Today

Nuance announced the launch of the Dragon Mobile SDK for iOS and Android via a new self-service website as part of the Nuance Mobile Developer Program.

>>>>Now mobile developers are able to quickly and easily leverage the powerful dictation and voice search capabilities at the core of the successful Dragon Dictationand Dragon Search apps, as well as Nuance’s trusted Vocalizer text-to-speech (TTS). 

In line with the explosion of mobile applications and similar to the model for Apple’s Developer Application (XCode) the SDK is available (for both Apple iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch iOS 4.0 and for Android v2.1 and higher. Supporting multiple languages the offering provides instant access to “easy-to-integrate prepackaged wrappers and widgets for rapid inclusion of voice recognition into their applications, all through a self-service website. Developers also have access to an on-line forum for additional support, a variety of code samples and full documentation.”

And all for free! Leveling the developer playing field and fostering innovation of speech enabled apps so that as Michael Thompson, SVP and GM of Nuance Mobile Division put it:

“If you can imagine it you can speech enable it”

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Additional Dangers of Vicodin

In the US Vicodin is the most common prescription given to patients coming in at 127 Million prescriptions (to give you a comparison there were ~13 million prescriptions of antibiotics for ear infections per year)

Unfortunately Vicodin (AKA Lortab and Percocet) contain a potentially dangerous ingredient that most people rarely think about: Acetaminophen (aka Tylenol). The FDA issued warning to manufacturers regarding the strength and highlighting the additional ingredients in these medications: 

FDA Drug Safety Communication: Prescription Acetaminophen Products to be Limited to 325 mg Per Dosage Unit; Boxed Warning Will Highlight Potential for Severe Liver Failure and even posted a video on YouTube: Prescription Acetaminophen/Opioid Combinations: Making Pain Medicines Safer

Sadly in some 40% of liver failure cases accidental overdose/over medication is the cause and preventable as detailed in this study Acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure: results of a United States multicenter, prospective study.

The message in my mind – we take far too many pain killers and these drugs come with some significant risks

Props to Scott Hensley for the original post FDA Clamps Down On Acetaminophen In Prescription Drugs

Toxic Waste Nuclear Sludge Candy Recalled for Lead

You may nto have even heard of it but I am bettign yrou kids have – Toxic Waste, Nuclear Sludge Chew Bar

The FDA has issued a recall for elevated levels of lead (0.24 parts per million; the U.S. FDA tolerance is 0.1 ppm) that potentially could cause health problems, particularly for infants, small children, and pregnant women.

Another reason to avoid Toxic Waste?!

Adoption of EHR Likely to be Very High

So a recent survey from the CDC: NCHS Health E-Stat “Electronic Medical Record/Electronic Health Record Systems of Office-based Physicians: United States, 2009 and Preliminary 2010 State Estimates” (pdf version here) and reported on the US Department of Health and Human Services website HHS.gov “Surveys show significant proportions of hospitals and doctors already plan to adopt electronic health records and qualify for federal incentive payments” suggests that

• 80% of hospitals , AND
• 41% of Office based physicians

are intending to take advantage of the federal incentive payments for adoption and meaningful use of certified EHR’s
And Dr David Blumenthal posted a video comment on the registration for EHR Incentive programs

This is substantially higher than a recent set of stats that had the rates posted much lower. This is good news all round if the incentive program has stimulated that much interest and desire to move towards the digitization of the medical record which for Stage 7 has barely reached double digits according to the most recent HIMSS Analytics assessment of EHR implementations.

For those wanting more information
Information about the incentive payments program is available on the CMS website and the Regional Extension Centers (RECs) technical assistance is available at the HealthIT web site. So for those still pondering if this is worthwhile investment it seems that healthcare systems and your clinical peers see this as a valuable and positive move. Do you want to watch the train leave the station or be on it?

Docs struggling financially, but new tech makes job easier

Survey: Docs struggling financially, but new tech makes job easier
http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/survey-docs-struggling-financially-new-tech-makes-job-easier
Technology can actually make your life better…certainly according to doctors

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A national license to practice medicine

This needs to be fixed if telemedicine is ever to take off

A national license to practice medicine
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/01/national-license-practice-medicine.html

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A Contraceptive Culture

The US lags far behind Europe in contraceptive use with a corresponding higher rate of teen pregnancy and abortions….
A Contraceptive Culture
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/contraceptive-culture.html

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