The story of the first case of Ebola in the U.S has been making headlines for about a week now, but an interesting development came out later in week that attributed to the accidental discharge of the patient to a glitch in the EHR system at the Dallas Hospital.
But now, officials at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital are changing that tune. Initially, it was reported that the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, arrived in the U.S on Sept. 20 and that he went to the hospital complaining of fever, stomach pain and headaches on Sept. 25. He returned to the hospitals on the 28 and was diagnosed with Ebola.
The hospital released a statement saying a flaw in the EHR system prompted the initial missed diagnosis.
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“The documentation of the travel history was located in the nursing workflow portion of the EHR, and was designed to provide a high reliability nursing process to allow for the administration of influenza vaccine under a physician-delegated standing order,” according to the statement. “The travel history would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow.”
But the hospital quickly added a clarification, noting that “the patient’s travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the [EHR], including within the physician’s workflow.” It went on to say “there was no flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions interacted related to this event” The hospital uses EHR software developed by Epic Systems.
The EHR claim does raise issues for vendors, which which will likely look to preempt any such claim — whether it’s true or not.
