Thursday, September 25, 2014

Electronic Patient Data held Hostage over Unpaid Bill

One of Many potential problems that could arise when patient records are moved from paper to electronic record keeping to satisfy Obamacare:
When staffers at a ti1ny medical practice in far-northern Maine arrived at work one July morning and tried to view medical records for that day’s patients, they got an unsettling response from their computer.
Full Circle Health Care acknowledged that it 
stopped paying monthly fees to CompuGroup, 
in part because of disputed billings.
“Access denied.’’
The staff called a technician, who confirmed what had happened. As part of a billing dispute, the vendor for the clinic’s electronic health records — a German corporation with US headquarters in Boston — took the unusual step of blocking the staff’s ability to look up medical histories on its 4,000 patients.
Nurses and physicians could no longer use the system to review diabetes records, blood pressure logs, medication histories, allergy reports, lab results. Nothing.
The company’s aggressive action poses what specialists in the field of digital health records say is a serious safety hazard for patients.
“It creates patient risk. It is dangerous, in my view,’’ said Dianne J. Bourque, a health care lawyer at Mintz Levin in Boston who specializes in regulatory and contract matters and is not involved in the case. “It’s a horrible, horrible remedy.’’
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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