September 18th, 2011 by DrWes in Health Policy
No Comments »
It was kind of funny reading this recent article from the New York Times that focuses on a relatively small health data breach from Stanford Hospital’s emergency room:
A medical privacy breach involving Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., led to the public posting of data for 20,000 emergency room patients, including names and diagnosis codes, on a commercial Web site for nearly a year, the hospital has confirmed.
Since discovering the breach last month, the hospital has been investigating how a detailed spreadsheet made its way from one of its vendors, a billing contractor identified as Multi-Specialty Collection Services, to a Web site called Student of Fortune, which allows students to solicit paid assistance with their schoolwork.
Gary Migdol, a spokesman for Stanford Hospital and Clinics, said the spreadsheet first appeared on the site on Sept. 9, 2010, as an attachment to a question about how to convert the data into a bar graph.
Although medical security breaches are not uncommon, the Stanford breach was notable for Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
September 15th, 2011 by Davis Liu, M.D. in News, Opinion
No Comments »
One of my favorite movies is Back to the Future starring Michael J. Fox. I must admit after reading this New York Times piece, titled “When Computers Come Between Doctors and Patients” I have to wonder.
Am I fortunate to be coming from the future? Because I completely disagree with Dr. Danielle Ofri, again.
I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to work in a medical group which has deployed the world’s largest civilian electronic medical record and have been using it since the spring of 2006. I don’t see the issue quite as much as Dr. Ofri did. It is possible that she examined patients in her office with a desk rather than an examination room.
If placed and mounted correctly in the exam room, the computer actually is an asset and can improve the doctor patient relationship. It is part of the office visit. The flat screen monitor can be rotated to begin a meaningful dialogue between the patient and me. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
September 11th, 2011 by DavedeBronkart in News
No Comments »
Big news from Down Under: the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a group of fifty consumer health advocates has unanimously backed an “opt-out” process for enrollment in electronic health records, reversing their previous position.
The issue is whether by default all patients have an EHR. “Opt-out” means you’re in by default – your records will be stored electronically – and you can opt out if you want. “Opt-in” means you do not have an EHR unless you specifically ask for one.
The group, the Consumer Health Forum, cites evidence from the neighboring country of New Zealand, in which Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at e-Patients.net*
August 30th, 2011 by Iltifat Husain, M.D. in News
No Comments »
I was always under the impression that medical documentation was reserved for the office and the hospital. Not necessarily so — even in the battlefield, medics document medical care in real time.
Unfortunately, the tools they use to do this documentation consists of bulky Motorola hand held devices that are four years old.
Four years is an eternity in the tech world. To put this in perspective, I was still rocking a Motorola RAZR back then. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Army is field testing the iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones in the battlefield. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at iMedicalApps*
August 26th, 2011 by Davis Liu, M.D. in News, Opinion
No Comments »
The New York Times recently published an article titled, Finding a Quality Doctor, Dr. Danielle Ofri an internist at NYU, laments how she was unable to perform as well as expected in the areas of patient care as it related to diabetes. From the August 2010 New England Journal of Medicine article, Dr. Ofri notes that her report card showed the following – 33% of patients with diabetes have glycated hemoglobin levels at goal, 44% have cholesterol levels at goal, and a measly 26% have blood pressure at goal. She correctly notes that these measurements alone aren’t what makes a doctor a good quality one, but rather the areas of interpersonal skills, compassion, and empathy, which most of us would agree constitute a doctor’s bedside manner, should count as well.
Her article was simply to illustrate that “most doctors are genuinely doing their best to help their patients and that these report cards might not be accurate reflections of their care” yet when she offered this perspective, a contrary point of view, many viewed it as “evidence of arrogance.”
She comforted herself by noting that those who criticized her were “mostly [from] doctors who were not involved in direct patient care (medical administrators, pathologists, radiologists). None were in the trenches of primary care.”
From the original NEJM article, Dr. Ofri concluded Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
