One of the nation’s largest and most ambitious electronic health record projects, which will be rolled out to Kaiser Permanente’s more than three dozen hospitals over the next two years, continues to be plagued with technical problems, reports the Los Angeles Times. The $4 billion project that will computerize the medical records of 8.6 million members is being viewed as a possible national model, but according to an internal Kaiser document and interviews with staff, the glitches have led to “potentially dangerous incidents,” writes the Times, including delays in emergency department care, malfunctioning bedside scanners to confirm medications, and patients being listed in the wrong beds.
Kaiser admits to the technical difficulties but says they have been resolved and that patient safety has never been in jeopardy. And although the internal report says that the EHR system--now fully in place in two Kaiser hospitals--was operational 80% to 88% of the time, Kaiser’s interim chief information officer says the system is now available 99.2% of the time. Kaiser CEO George Halvorson told the Times that, given the scope of the EHR project, “it couldn’t be going better.” The Times also reports that the California Department of Managed Health Care has asked about the project, a “first step before a possible formal investigation.”
