Electronic health records raise doubt / Google service's inaccuracies may hold wide lesson
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Posted by Monty Solomon on April 14, 2009, 10:11 am
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Electronic health records raise doubt Google service's inaccuracies may hold wide lesson By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | April 13, 2009 WASHINGTON - When Dave deBronkart, a tech-savvy kidney cancer survivor, tried to transfer his medical records from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to Google Health, a new free service that lets patients keep all their health records in one place and easily share them with new doctors, he was stunned at what he found. Google said his cancer had spread to either his brain or spine - a frightening diagnosis deBronkart had never gotten from his doctors - and listed an array of other conditions that he never had, as far as he knew, like chronic lung disease and aortic aneurysm. A warning announced his blood pressure medication required "immediate attention." "I wondered, 'What are they talking about?' " said deBronkart, who is 59 and lives in Nashua. DeBronkart eventually discovered the problem: Some of the information in his Google Health record was drawn from billing records, which sometimes reflect imprecise information plugged into codes required by insurers. Google Health and others in the fast-growing personal health record business say they are offering a revolutionary tool to help patients navigate a fragmented healthcare system, but some doctors fear that inaccurate information from billing data could lead to improper treatment. ... http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/04/13/electronic_health_records_raise_doubt/ ***** Moderator's Note ***** Sigh. The thing you were scared of at lunchtime is now twice as scary; film at eleven. Seriously, this sounds like the classic case of GIGO: Garbage In, Gospel Out(tm). Google's IT crew, knowing everything there is to know about information science and nothing about how-to-get-paid-more-from-health-insurance science, assumed that the billing codes represented the truth. Unfortunately, they're going to find out the hard way that nurses no longer take blood-pressure readings; they provide followup care for hypertension treatment, etc., ad nauseum. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator Please put [Telecom] at the end of your subject line, or I may never see your post! Thanks! We have a new address for email submissions: telecomdigestmoderator atsign telecom-digest.org. This is only for those who submit posts via email: if you use a newsreader or a web interface to contribute to the digest, you don't need to change anything. | ||||||||||
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Posted by Sam Spade on April 15, 2009, 9:38 am
Please log in for more thread options  http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/04/13/electronic_health_records_raise_doubt/ eleven. That should be apparent on its face to medical professionals. Billing codes mostly mean the procedure was performed, and that's it. I guess some are rough diagnosis, but not even close to the report an an angiogram or brain scan MRI, as examples. | ||||||||||
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