For years, we’ve heard about how much clinical information is locked away in payer databases. Payers have offered to provide clinical summaries, electronic and otherwise, The problem is, it’s potentially inaccurate clinical information because it’s all based on billing claims. (Don’t believe me? Just ask “E-Patient” Dave de Bronkart.) It is for this reason that I don’t much trust “quality” ratings based on claims data.

Just how much of a difference there was between claims data and true clinical data hasn’t been so clear, though. Until today.

A paper just published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that searching EMRs with natural-language processing identified up to 12 times the number of pneumonia cases and twice the rate of kidney failure and sepsis as did searches based on billing codes—ironically called “patient safety indicators” in the study—for patients admitted for surgery at six VA hospitals. That means that hundreds of the nearly 3,000 patients whose were reviewed had postoperative complications that didn’t show up in quality and performance reports.

Just think of the implications of that as we move toward Accountable Care Organizations and outcomes-based reimbursement. If healthcare continues to rely on claims data for “quality” measurement, facilities that don’t take steps to prevent complications and reduce hospital-acquired infections could score just as high—and earn just as much bonus money—as those hospitals truly committed to patient safety. If so, quality rankings will remain false, subjective measures of true performance.

So how do we remedy this? It may not be so easy. As Cerner’s Dr. David McCallie told Bloomberg News, it will take a lot of reprogramming to embed natural-language search into existing EMRs, and doing so could, according to the Bloomberg story, “destabilize software systems” and necessitate a lot more training for physicians.

I’m no technical expert, so I don’t know how NLP could destabilize software. From a layman’s perspective, it almost sounds as if vendors don’t want to put the time and effort into redesigning their products. Could it be?

I suppose there is still a chance that HHS could require NLP in Stage 3 of meaningful use—it’s not gonna happen for Stage 2—but I’m sure vendors and providers alike will say it’s too difficult. They may even say there just isn’t enough evidence; this JAMA study certainly would have to be replicated and corroborated. But are you willing to take the chance that the hospital you visit for surgery doesn’t have any real incentive to take steps to prevent complications?

I was recently quoted in an article in Federal Computer Week about the VistA EHR. I think the first paragraph of the article summarizes the article quite well:

Is VistA a diva in disguise? The Veterans Affairs Department’s renowned electronic health record (EHR) software is touted as one of the premier systems in the world. But it also has a reputation as a star performer who’s difficult to manage.

My part of the article is them quoting me saying, “It is amazing how polarizing VistA can be”

A small contribution for sure, but it’s so true. If I want traffic to this site, all I have to do is rip MUMPS and they’ll come out in mass to tell me why it’s great and why it sucks. People have strong opinions both ways. The crazy thing is that both groups are probably right.

P.S. I think we’ll make next week Meaningful Use week. Hopefully time will permit. Lots to still say about it. In the meantime, you should check out my Meaningful Use posts on EMR and EHR.

“Looking for savings in hospitals that use EMRs is short-sighted. The real payday for use of EMRs will come with interoperability. Measurable savings will be realized as middleware is installed that will allow for the electronic transmission and translation of patient records across different proprietary systems between delivery networks.” – Jim Lott, Executive Vice President, Hospital Council of Southern California, Los Angeles source

“EMRs don’t save money in standalone situations. However, EMRs will absolutely save significant money (and improve care and safety) when connected and sharing clinical information.” Johnny Walker, MBA, CPA, Founder and past CEO of Patient Safety Institute, Plano, Texas source

These two quote remind me a lot of my previous post about the real long term benefits of EMR. Interoperability is one of those benefits that we won’t see right away. In fact, we’ll see little benefit from them until we hit a critical mass of EMR implementations that it’s almost futile to share information between EMR software. Kaiser and the VA are always held up as examples of successful EMR implementations and one of the main reasons for that is that they have such broad EMR adoption that they can share the clinical information across all of their clinics.

So, YES! there is a real benefit to EMR adoption long term and it comes dressed in the name “EMR data sharing.” However, it’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t diminish the very important more quickly seen EMR benefits.

The VA announced about 4-5 years ago that they would be releasing their Vista EMR as an open source package. Of course, the headline read “Government Gives Away Free EMR.” In essence, this was true. The government was making their Vista EMR available for free. In fact, I remember one of the people in HIM had an article on this subject and brought it to me when I first started working with EMR software.

I think this was a really smart move by the VA and the government and I think we’re just now starting to see some of the fruits of it being open source come to fruition. Check out this recent post about Vista on EMR and EHR. I have no doubt that the VA’s Vista EMR (err…the open source version of it) will be a player in the hospital EMR space.

The problem I have with it (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this) is that Vista EMR isn’t meant for small practices like solo docs and small group practices in an ambulatory care setting. I’m not saying that it couldn’t be used that way, but it seems to me like taking a sledge hammer to a 1 penny nail. It’s overkill and is likely to cause more problems than good.

Here’s one example of a “feature” I’ve learned about the Vista EMR (and really the MUMPS database that powers it): “VistA is a multi-user system that actually can get faster with more people in the machine.”

I haven’t personally tested the statement, but it makes since why it could be the case. In fact, it’s a really cool feature for a large hospital with a large number of users accessing the same patients over and over again. Now let’s apply this to a small ambulatory practice. You only have a few people accessing a patient. Does this mean that Vista would actually be slower than other databases when you only have a small user base (ie. a small clinical practice)?

I’m not an expert on Vista (and probably never will be), but it seems to me that the marketing message for Vista should have read, “Government Gives Away Free Hospital EMR.”