The following article appeared on Tuesday morning (while I was distracted by COAG).
Medicare glitch affects records
Karen Dearne
From: The Australian
April 20, 2010 12:00AM
A SOFTWARE glitch in Medicare's systems in February has caused a major safety alert, with the agency set to notify thousands of doctors that some patient records may have been incorrectly updated during a three-day period.
Medicare told The Australian yesterday that changes to its online patient verification system after maintenance on February 6 could have resulted in an adverse test result not being matched to the right person.
While the agency believes there is little risk to patient safety, it will contact affected medical practices so doctors can check their records and make corrections if necessary.
"About 1300 transactions to date (have been identified involving) software that automatically updates patient's first names linked to clinical systems," a Medicare spokesman said.
"This figure may increase as we finish contacting all vendors to determine how their software treats patient verification information. Care is needed to ensure retention of the patient's name as they are known to the practice -- the first name should not be overwritten without careful checking."
Lots more here:
This has been followed up here:
Medicare slow to fix record bungle
MARK METHERELL
April 21, 2010
MEDICARE Australia has taken 10 weeks to alert 2700 medical practices of a bungle in the agency's computer system, which could have linked patients to the wrong diagnosis.
The problem has emerged at a sensitive time for the government, which is struggling to get agreement from doctors and others for regulations for the first steps of its national e-health scheme, the introduction of unique patient identifier numbers that are supposed to be introduced in July.
The potential for a mix-up between members of the same family arose after Medicare made minor software changes in early February. This had the unintended effect of switching the name of the patient receiving a service to another name on the Medicare card.
Medicare Australia said in a statement to the Herald yesterday that it was writing to 2700 medical practices to inform them and to provide details of their practice records where they may have been incorrectly updated.
Much more here:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/medicare-slow-to-fix-record-bungle-20100420-sru6.html
Clearly there has been a pretty major problem.
Now the Opposition has weighed in with the following release:
MEDICARE COMPUTER SYSTEM FAILURE PUT LIVES AT RISK: SENATOR SUE BOYCE
The health of tens of thousands of Australians may have been seriously compromised by a computer system glitch at Medicare which the government body had tried to keep secret for eight weeks, Liberal Senator Sue Boyce said today.
Senator Boyce said Medicare became aware on Monday, February 9 of a software problem which recorded patient details incorrectly without any indication of an error.
She said industry sources had told her that there had been more than 1,000,000 uses of the Online Patient Verification (OPV), Patient Verification (PVM) and Enterprise Patient Verification (EPV) during the period the glitch had affected the system.
"The Human Services Minister Chris Bowen has refused to apologise or even acknowledge this problem exists. His silence can only be seen as confirming that he is a prisoner of Medicare and not willing to stand up for patients against a bureaucracy more concerned with protecting itself than being honest and proactive in patients' interests."
"The results of this serious failure in the system have still not been completely checked and I understand from industry sources that almost 30,000 patient records are still affected as well as some 2,700 medical practices."
"However, despite the repeated pleadings by private software vendors in meetings with Medicare officers to go public, acknowledge the problem and alert health care providers, Medicare dithered and tried to cover it up for eight weeks before issuing a letter on April 1," Senator Boyce said.
"This letter must have been Medicare's private April Fool's Day joke because it tried to gloss over the problem by claiming that system functionality had been restored within three days of its being detected. What this conveniently ignored was that tens of thousands of patients' records had been corrupted," she said.
"Medicare has claimed that only 1,300 transactions have been identified so far as being affected by the glitch but there were more than 1,000,000 uses during the glitch affected period."
"I have been told that there are about a further 30,000 transactions already identified as needing to be checked . This is being freely acknowledged in the medical software industry and the medical profession. Originally, Medicare tried to assert that the problem only related to rebate claiming and that simply wasn't true as they have now been forced to admit. "
"I understand the fault meant that some pathology test results would not have made it back to the patient's GP or could have been attached to the medical history of a different family member. This glitch meant that only the first name appearing on a family Medicare card was recognised and all pathology results for others on the card were recorded for that person."
"Obviously, this could lead to misdiagnosis, no diagnosis, unneeded and possibly dangerous medication or no medication at all, depending on the order a person's name appeared on a family Medicare card."
Senator Boyce said to add insult to injury, Medicare had tried to infer in a statement published last Tuesday that the glitch was the fault of medical software providers.
"This is a blatant lie as all software that accesses Medicare has to have a NOI – a Notice of Integration – which means Medicare itself has tested the software and found it meets their standards. To try and suggest now that the glitch was the fault of vendors' software is an own goal. If the vendors' software was at fault, then Medicare is actually saying their own quality assurance processis useless," Senator Boyce said.
Senator Boyce said some software providers to Medicare had held several meetings with senior Medicare officers through February and March pleading with them to come clean about the on-going problem.
"It seems that the statement Medicare issued last Tuesday is the payback for these software providers who dared to question them," Senator Boyce said.
"The medical software industry and the medical profession itself remain deeply concerned not just about the ongoing problem but Medicare's attempts to sweep it under the carpet. This does not bode well for the future when Medicare has an even more central and enhanced role in the national e-health network," she said.
"All healthcare providers including medicos are worried about the possible effects of this ongoing problem particularly the inadvertent harming of patients."
April 21, 2010
It is really good to see the amount of research that Senator Boyce and her office have done - clearly speaking to the MSIA and so on - to form their views.
Given the way COAG has just ignored e-Health it is great to see the Opposition making sure there is some accountability in all this.
I hope NEHTA is the next target, as there are a lot of issues there that could really do with some ‘sunlight’
David.
As to Senator Boyce and her relationship with the personnel of DoHA, there ought to be plenty of material in transcripts of Estimates from which to form a view. Maybe the wind is now blowing from a different direction.
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