sentinel events

I have noted that numerous policy makers I've spoken with freely admit their knowledge of healthcare IT is zero, or limited to what they've seen and heard in the press (i.e., mainly marketing messages in disguise).

Since most of these officials have little time to study the issues about health IT in depth, I've created a zipped archive of four articles I consider key.

The articles can serve as a primer on health IT problems:

In 2005 the RAND corporation ‘guesstimated’ figures for healthcare IT benefits based on existing, limited data sets (http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9136/index1.html).

In many past posts on Healthcare Renewal I have commented on a seeming industry blindness to a growing body of literature and experiences of those "in the trenches" that throws doubts upon Utopian views of health IT as a panacea for healthcare's quality and cost problems.

I first wrote about these observations a decade ago and was merely standing on the shoulders of those who preceded me with their own critical thoughts and observations regarding cybernetic miracles in medicine.

In previous posts on the National Research Council report on HIT, the Joint Commission Sentinel Events Alert, and others on HC Renewal I've alluded to my belief that a root cause of the state of healthcare information technology (high cost, low diffusion, poor usability, poor interoperability, low reliability, questionable benefits, lack of features most helpful to clinicians, etc.) is - to be frank - industry dysfunction.

In "Joint Commission Sentinel Events Alert On Healthcare IT" I applauded the Joint Commission (the organization that accredits U.S. healthcare organizations such as hospitals) for releasing a Sentinel Events Alert in December 2008 on the risks of improperly implemented health IT.

At "A 21st Century Plague?