After the debacle in Dallas with Texas Health Resources and the false assertion that the EHR was to blame for not catching America’s first case of Ebola, the usability of EHRs has been a focal discussion point for hospital administrators and the health IT crowd.
The problem, officials with Texas Health Resources said at the time, was that the EHR didn’t automatically indicate Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan’s travel status. Epic, the EHR vendor, pushed back on that and the hospital quickly changed its tune. Duncan eventually died of Ebola at the hospital on Oct. 8, the first patient in the U.S. to do so.
Nevertheless, hospitals have used the incident as a “teachable moment,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Massachusetts General Hospital is no exception, having recently adopted a new EHR platform from Boston startup QPID Health that “automatically matches a patient’s travel and family history with medical symptoms,” the Journal reported. “If Ebola is suspected, the application flashes a blinking “Q” to alert hospital personnel.”
The industry, both hospitals and vendors, has taken notice.
Athenahealth Inc., which makes cloud-based systems for 23,000 medical practices, has made new screening questions available to its users in case infected patients turned up at doctors’ offices. “You’d be surprised how many practices don’t have a travel-history question or country of origin in their EMRs,” said Todd Rothenhaus, the company’s chief medical officer.
“EMR vendors have scrambled to add new screening questions and alerts to their systems in the wake of the missteps with the Ebola patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas Hospital. That patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who had recently come to the U.S. from Liberia, was initially misdiagnosed as having “sinusitis” and sent home, only to return three days later, gravely ill.”
Carl Dvorak, president of Epic Systems, told the Journal that after the Dallas case, Epic, which dominates the EHR-hospital market, notified all of its 320 hospital clients across the globe and suggested a change in how systems are set up.
