Critics Urge Lawmakers To Tread Carefully With Health IT Proposals

[Welcome to AllNurses ktsue230!]

Well, let's think about it. You are a little stressed out at the end of the day and have a little trouble sleeping. You ask your doctor for a sleep aid. There is an incident' at work and the boss is looking for someone to take the fall and TA-DA - your name comes up as being impaired on the job due to 'drug' use.

Let's look at another example. You and 'Mary' are applying for the same position but 'Mary' is on birth control and you aren't -- she gets the position because the boss doesn't want the job on hold while you are possibly out on materity leave.

Let's look at another example. Joe is a hard working dedicated employee but he has a son that has multiple serious health conditions. The boss finds a way to get rid of Joe because his son's medical costs are making the premiums go up for everyone in the group.

Let's look at another example. John is a hard working dedicated guy that just happens to be HIV+ but shows no signs of AIDS. A disreputable person finds out about his HIV status and threatens to 'out' him at work if he doesn't steal from the company.

Lucy had a one night stand which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. She has an abortion but doesn't tell her husband. She is vulnerable if someone finds out.
A policeman is diagnosed with diabetes after some early changes are detecked in his eyes. He is vulnerable if someone finds out. A doctor finds out that he carries the gene for Huntingtons disease. He is vulnerable if someone finds out.
A woman finds out that she carries the gene for breast cancer. She is vulnerable is someone finds out.

Let's look at it another way. Your EMR is changed by someone that is trying to cover up a botched operation, a bad drug or incorrect billing. How will you know? How can you 'fix' something that you never see? How can you police what is going on in 'cyberspace' unless you are watching every second of every day? If you don't think it can happen then you should talk to the victims of identity theft or the banks that have been 'robbed' by hackers changing code.

I hate to sound paranoid but this is a mightly big step we are taking and I would just like to see it done more thoughtfully. I am not saying it can not be done safely but I worry about the consequences of mistakes along the way.

The other thing is that a lot of nurses have NO computer experience at all. Nada. Zip. Something intuitive to you or me is overwhelming to them.

Rocky Creek,
In the situations that you have listed, are the employers or perspective insurance companies also computer hackers?
Also as far as the ability to change records, it if far more difficult to change an EMR than for a piece of paper to be conveniently lost, or edited. In the city of Jacksonville EMS has electronic charting. When my son was in respiratory distress they were called. The paramedic did not feel that my 1 week old son needed to be transported to the hospital. I and my mother had to take him ourselves. By the time we got there he had to be resuscitated and spent the next week in ICU. After my son passed away and I asked to review what the paramedic charted about my son. On the night that EMS was called he charted a lot of things such as vital signs that were not done. The electronic record also showed that 5 days later, after an altercation with my mother in the parking lot of the hospital, the record showed where he edited or attempted to edit vital signs and narrative. I am thankful that these records were not paper.
The point of my question earlier is that I can understand why someone would want my identity so they could get credit cards or my bank information in order to get into my savings. I however do not see why any hacker would be interested to know that I have diabetes, or even HIV. Yes my employer may want to know that before they hire me, but what would a hacker do with this info?
Most hospitals in Jax are at least partially electronic, the biggest hold up however are the antiquated staff, mostly docs, that are fighting change.

<<All risks that can be mitigated by:

a) Developing a strong national standard for the programming and implementation of an EMR system, and

b) Greatly restricting WHAT your EMR can be used for... and the penalties for unlawful possession of personal information of any kind.

I'm not denying that the risks are there but, for the most part, secure systems are pretty secure from hacking. It happens but only rarely does sensitive data get compromised.

Most of those things that you're talking about can still happen with paper records.>>


I guess I didn't make my point -- people who break rules don't care about rules; people who break laws don't care about laws. You can't make a "one size its all" computer program or write codes that can't be hacked/broken. The best statement I have heard on the subject is "as long as there is a way to explode the weakest person, there will be a person who will be willing do it...The addition of computers will just make it faster, easier, anonymous and farther reaching."