CDC Warns Hospitals To Improve Emr System
Outdated software is one of the major components to deployment issues
with the patient ’ s previously normal laboratory result and the most recent abnormal result went unnoticed . The young woman ’ s advanced cervical cancer was only detected when she sought treatment for other symptoms that had developed . As a result of the delay in diagnosis and treatment , the young woman had a hysterectomy . “ Had a clinician provided input during development of the system , or even during implementation , this patient safety event could have been avoided ,” said Sawchuk .
Additional examples the CDC reported of EHR interoperability and display issues included :
• Hard-coding of data elements in the EMR system , such as reference ranges and unites of measure , which can cause errors when the reporting laboratory does not use the same values
• Truncation of text and long number strings causing incompleteness of data when the laboratory and EMR system have different maximum character limits for fields
• Allowable special characters causing unusual system behaviors , such as displaying gibberish or stopping interface communications
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