Internal FDA memorandum of Feb. 23, 2010 to Jeffrey Shuren on HIT risks. Smoking gun? I report, you decide.

From the aforementioned Huffington Post Investigative Fund article "FDA, Obama Digital Medical Records Team at Odds over Safety Oversight" and timeline of industry resistance to government oversight of health IT (link), one document stands out in my mind.

The internal FDA memorandum of Feb. 23, 2010 ("not intended for public use") to Jeffrey Shuren on HIT risks. which I have now re-hosted at this link (PDF) is quite fascinating.

Internal FDA Memo ("not intended for public use") on potential dangers of health IT. Download the PDF here.

The memo begins:

This report serves to characterize medical device reports (MDRs) in the Manufacturer and User Facility Experience (MAUDE) database, inclusive of MedSun reports, pertaining to Health Information Technology (H-IT) safety issues as requested by the Office of the Center Director, Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), in contrast to the previously submitted MedSun and Office of Compliance information.

(I've mentioned MAUDE here and here, including a report of an HIT-related patient death at the latter link.)

To those "anecdotalists" in the healthcare information technology community who believe reports of HIT-related harm are "anecdotal, and anecdotes don't make data" (as opposed to the "Markopolists"):

When an internal FDA review of their own data concludes the following, I invite you to think about the point of view that maintains that reports of HIT-related patient injury and death are so 'fragmentary' as to not merit (actually, demand) significant resources be diverted to rigorously addressing the issue of HIT risk:

In summary, the results of this data review suggest significant clinical implications and public safety issues surrounding Health Information Technology. The most commonly reported H-IT safety issues included wrong patient/wrong data, medication administration issues, clinical data loss/miscalculation, and unforeseen software design issues; all of which have varying impact on the patient�s clinical care and outcome, which included 6 death and 43 injuries. The absence of mandatory reporting enforcement of H-IT safety issues limits the number of relevant MDRs and impedes a more comprehensive understanding of the actual problems and implications.

This is especially true considering the FDA's own noted limitations of their information sources:

Limitations of the MAUDE search and final subset of MDRs include the following:

1. Not all H-IT safety issue MDRs can be captured due to limitations of reporting practices including

... (a) Vast number of H-IT systems that interface with multiple medical devices currently assigned to multiple procodes making it difficult to identify specific procodes for H-IT safety issues;
... (b) Procode assignments are also affected by the ability of the reporter/contractor to correctly identify the event as a H-IT safety issue;
... (c) Correct identification by the reporter of the suspect device brand name is challenged by difficulties discerning the actual H-IT system versus the device it supports.
2. Due to incomplete information in the MDRs, it is difficult to unduplicate similar reports, potentially resulting in a higher number of reports than actual events.
3. Reported death and injury events may only be associated with the reported device but not necessarily attributed to the device.
Memo: H-IT Safety Issues
4 Correct identification by the reporter of the manufacturer name is convoluted by the inability to discern the manufacturer of the actual H-IT system versus the device it supports.
5 The volume of MDR reporting to MAUDE may be impacted by a lack of understanding the reportability of H-IT safety issues and enforcement of such reporting.

If HIT were VIOXX or Phen-Fen, the class action lawsuits would likely be starting already.

(Note: for more on why there is a scarcity of data on HIT related adverse events, see my paper "Remediating an Unintended Consequence of Healthcare IT: A Dearth of Data on Unintended Consequences of Healthcare IT" at this Scribd link. This paper was not accepted on first draft by the medical informatics peer review process. I received anonymous review comments such as one that paradoxically stated that the paper "did not contain anything that could not be read in any big city newspaper", an odd comment indeed considering the topic. On that basis I decided not to attempt a revision but to post the paper publicly. -- SS)

One has to ask why this internal FDA report has not been made public until the Huffington Post article, nor been acted upon vigorously. The term of art is "double standard" compared to pharmaceuticals and other medical devices.

When the NEJM starts publishing unreferenced statements of absolute certainty like this from ONC Chair Blumenthal:

The widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States is inevitable. EHRs will improve caregivers� decisions and patients� outcomes. Once patients experience the benefits of this technology, they will demand nothing less from their providers. Hundreds of thousands of physicians have already seen these benefits in their clinical practice.

and the HuffPo Investigative Fund quotes him as follows:

�We know that every study and every professional consensus process has concluded that electronic health systems strongly and materially improve patient safety. And we believe that in spreading electronic health records we are going to avoid many types of errors that currently plague the healthcare system,� Blumenthal said when unveiling new regulations in Washington on July 13.

... a statement easily demonstrable to be without merit, in fact, then one has to wonder where science has gone.

One also has to wonder if someone is short-circuiting the FDA's role in regulating this technology.

Could Blumenthal (in essence a family doctor), Sibelius (a trial lawyer), DeParle, or others, or the White House itself be telling FDA how to conduct its business? Are they impeding FDA's regulatory role in the irrationally exuberant multi-billion $$$ race to HIT utopia?

Finally, it is my belief that numerous health IT/medical informatics academics and talking heads who've steadfastly avoided the issue of health IT-related patient harm, or scoffed at it in legally-discoverable forums, might find themselves as defendants in upcoming plaintiff lawsuits. "Knew, or should have known" is the phrase that might apply.

As I learned from my pre-informatics Transit Authority medical management experience, juries will likely not take kindly to academic and marketing arguments akin to Scott Adam's sarcastic example of the logical fallacy of "ignoring all anecdotal evidence":

"I always get hives immediately after eating strawberries. But without a scientifically controlled experiment, it's not reliable data. So I continue to eat strawberries every day, since I can't tell if they cause hives."

-- SS