Speaking at SMi’s eBusiness in the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Industry conference, Dr Ricci drew attention to an IOM study into adverse clinical events. Medical charts reviewed in New York and Colorado hospitalsshowed a high rate of adverse events (2.9-3.7%), with deaths often occuring.
Extrapolated to the entire population, the study suggests that 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur every year and half of these are due to preventable medical errors. Healthcare is a decade or more behind other high risk industries in its attempt to ensure basic safety, noted Dr Ricci. These deaths are equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing in the States every day. The main reasons for errors can be attributed to processes, not people and IT could avoid these.
In particular illegible handwriting, manual medical records and in correct administration of drugs were the largest causes of error, fostered by no linkage in IT infrastructure.
The healthcare system is running on a broken economic model. It’s peverse that the more ill people there are, the more renevues, said Dr Ricci. Adopting best clinical practices is low on the list of priorities in healthcare, according to another cited study – cutting costs and improving efficiency are high priorities for the application of eBusiness with a more visible return on investment.
