Posted on 06/19/2024 7:58:22 PM PDT by george76
A cyberattack on a major American hospital system has caused dangerous medication mix ups including patients administered narcotics by mistake, leading to an admission to intensive care for life-threatening breathing difficulties.
In another case, a female patient suffered a cardiac arrest and died after data mishaps delayed test results that would determine her life-saving treatment.
Elsewhere, a nurse working for the Kansas branch of the major medical group recalled a 'near miss,' which involved him almost administering a potentially life-threatening dose of narcotic to a baby — because of false paperwork.
Employees at Ascension, a Catholic healthcare system with more than 140 facilities across the country, said these patients are just some of those suffering from the continued fallout of a cyberattack last month.
The healthcare giant 'detected unusual activity' across its networks, which left doctors and nurses locked out of digital systems and unable to access vital details about patients' care.
Despite Ascension claiming on June 14 that access to the network was 'restored,' more than a dozen staff have revealed that astonishing mistakes are still taking place across hospital sites — from medication mix-ups to lost test results.
Employees say their hospitals are relying on shocking workarounds to bypass the computers, including using handwritten, sticky notes to keep track of dozens of critically ill patients.
Justin Neisser, a travel nurse working at the Ascension hospital ..: 'I just want to warn those patients that are coming to any of the Ascension facilities that there will be delays in care. There is potential for error and for harm.
A emergency room doctor at an Ascension hospital in Michigan, who remained anonymous for fear of retaliation, told Kaiser Health News a patient was given a dangerous narcotic intended for someone else because of confusing paperwork.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Appointment books cause paper cuts! What kind of monster are you!?
Thank you for injecting some sanity into the discussion.
ROFL!! Thanks for the well-needed laugh!!
People were dispensing the right medications and proper dosages in hospitals, long before computers came on the scene. As far as I know, hospital medications are dispensed from an in-hospital pharmacy, where a pharmacist or other qualified person gets the dosages together to be issued to where they are needed. The person that dispenses those dosages is the person responsible for making sure the medications and dosages are correct before they leave that room. A second person, if not a third, should be assigned to double-check and verify the first person's work before it leaves that room. If there isn't a paper record of the required meds and dosages for each patient in that hospital, and everything is stored on the computer, that bad decision falls on whoever came up with that procedure, and didn't have a back-up plan if/when the system ever went down. There is no excuse that can account for anyone in a hospital being given the wrong mixture of meds, or the wrong dosage.
I had a Rheumatologist I had been seeing for several years. One time when I had an appointment with him, I was sitting in the exam room waiting for him to come in. He walked into the room, took one look at the laptop on the desk that he used to record his office visits, saw that the screen was black, and said: "Oh dear, that doesn't look good." I asked him if he meant the darkened screen, and he said "yes." I told him it was probably just asleep, and I showed him by hitting one of the keys on it, and the log-in screen popped up. He thanked me for "fixing" it. I asked him if he didn't have a computer at home, and he said "yes." I didn't bother to ask him why he didn't know computers go to sleep, and left it at that. It wasn't long after, that the health network was planning on installing a new operating system, and this same doctor related to me how concerned he was about the training he'd have to go through to use it. He was actually scared to death of not being able to successfully complete the training, and ended up retiring so he wouldn't have to deal with it. I was kind of glad to see him go, as it was one less $25 co-pay I wouldn't have to deal with.
I used to have to call docs to ask them what they meant by their computer entered order...it was such a mess...
Their excuse...”I am PC, pre computer”...truth was the computer system was unintuitive and very poorly programmed.
Many docs would not bring their patients to the hospital because they couldn’t figure out the system. The hospital lost many patients. I believe the computer system was one of the many reasons why the hospital chain went bankrupt.
pro “choice” hackers, because Catholic
That’s what I thought too.
“Okay, if the computer screws up, you should be competent enough to know if the drug/dosage is lethal.”
Nope. Back in the 80’s we were not smarter than the computer. Drugs were a mystery. We’d stamp our feet and tell people they were hurting our feelings when we had no one to point the finger at, no computer/lack of, to blame
We were lost. We were stupid. Waiting for someone to invent a computer so we could know what we were doing
No. Actually any nurse is able to calculate a drop rate for a drug- number of drops per ml, without an IV machine. The pharmacy should have a contingency plan as well.
not really on mg per weight because that doesn’t address tolerance to morphine
The hospital is supposed to keep a hard copy admissions form. History and physical, mediation and dosage list, insurance info,
During a week long stay much can change that is not on record. The MDs have to step up then in the case of a computer outage, computer outages happen.
Any pediatric or er nurse knows narc overdoses. Which is why it didn’t happen
a woman suffering from low blood sugar and confusion went into cardiac arrest and died after hospital workers said they waited four hours for lab results they needed in order to proceed with her care
......
If they could not figure out a low blood sugar without the lab...ie symptoms and or the on site blood sugar monitor there is more wrong with Dr.s and nurses knowledge todaythan I understand.
Someplace I have a schematic of who has access to health info.
Apparently the only people who don’t are your next of kin and the next provider you are seeing who needs it.
People mistakenly believe HIPAA is about patient privacy. It’s true that there is a relatively minor section of the law that deals with that, and it usually gets enforced rigorously. But the vast majority of the law is actually about how to share medical information electronically between all the entities that need it, such as insurers, Medicare and Medicaid, billing companies,electronic medical record vendors, and other third party business associates.
There really is no way to do medicine these days without an electronic medical record system. And they have to be connected to the internet for many reasons, including all the things I mentioned in the previous paragraph, but also because of the distributed nature of how medical care is delivered, the need for a patient’s medical information to be accessible in different locations by multiple care providers, technical support, the location of the data center, and many other reasons.
The days of your medical record being a physical folder stored in the bowels of the hospital are long gone, only to return after the EMP, and then only until society recovers enough to do it again.
What is a normal amount of narcotics for one patient can be life threatening for another, based on non-obvious things such as underlying medical conditions, allergies, etc
Cyber attack?
Maybe AI run amuck. AI apps always warn of their propensity to make errors.
A great question. Oftentimes patients (like myself) are seen by medical professionals from different health systems. In recent years, I have been a patient across four different health systems. It’s easier for doctors to communicate with each other concerning one patient by accessing the internet. Sharing test results, for instance.
You nailed it.
The Technology Trap in action. Humans are foregoing getting necessary life skills in the belief that Technology will save them.
Having spent my career in Medical Informatics (the application of computers to the practice of medicine and medical information), I can attest to the fact that there is a tendency in the industry to find a problem for the technical solution you have in mind. Sometimes a Post-It Note really is the right solution. But that’s really not the case with medical records in general. For all the negatives that come with electronic medical records, such as what Ascension is going through right now, the positives so far outweigh the negatives that it would be malpractice not to use one.
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