"....I didn't highlight a lot of administrative data. Administrative data, it is true, what we have today, but one caveat for you. You read the Boston Globe, and you will see that I have had some fun over the last two weeks investigating the nature of administrative data."
A remarkable series of public postings and articles demonstrates how people are getting the bugs out of systems. It all surrounds a self-identified cancer survivor named Dave deBronkart who is fairly unique:
- He is cared for by Danny Sands, an informatics leader practicing at Beth Israel and also employed by Cisco
- His care is provided at Beth Israel Deaconess; the inaccuracies were in transferring claims data from B.I. to Google Health. The CIO of Beth Israel is John Halamka, a national authority on health IT and an advisor to Google Health.
One would think: "If there is anyplace where things should not go wrong, this would be it." Not so. (But this writer points out that there were no adverse medical events and that the system responded very quickly to the issues).
The series begins with an April 1 posting on ePatients.net. Mr deBronkart found numerous innacuracies in his Google personal health record, primarily because the record contained a wide array of medical claims. (Read this long posting and ask again what the risks are of using medical claims as a medical record "proxy.")
This in turn was picked up by the Boston Globe.
John Halamka gave a very thoughtful answer to the concerns in his blog.
On April 18, e-patient Dave was able say that the Boston Globe published an article saying Beth Israel had discontinued transferring claims data to Google Health.
Bottom line:
- Claims data do not correspond to clinical situations; one should view claims-based clincial systems with suspicion
- The Internet seems to be a great way to raise awareness and bring about positive quality control.
A remarkable series of public postings and articles demonstrates how people are getting the bugs out of systems. It all surrounds a self-identified cancer survivor named Dave deBronkart who is fairly unique:
One would think: "If there is anyplace where things should not go wrong, this would be it." Not so. (But this writer points out that there were no adverse medical events and that the system responded very quickly to the issues).
The series begins with an April 1 posting on ePatients.net. Mr deBronkart found numerous innacuracies in his Google personal health record, primarily because the record contained a wide array of medical claims. (Read this long posting and ask again what the risks are of using medical claims as a medical record "proxy.")
- Follow this link to the posting
This in turn was picked up by the Boston Globe.- Follow this link to the Globe article
John Halamka gave a very thoughtful answer to the concerns in his blog.- Follow this link to Halamka's posting on April 17
On April 18, e-patient Dave was able say that the Boston Globe published an article saying Beth Israel had discontinued transferring claims data to Google Health.Bottom line: