Close on the heels of a letter sent to several IT infrastructure companies this past fall, in which he investigated “complaints and/or concerns” he’d received about electronic medical records, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has issued another missive to 31 American hospitals.
In his letter, Grassley asks those providers 11 detailed questions about their experiences so far with the purchasing and implementation of healthcare IT.
With $19 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act earmarked for medical information technology, Grassley writes that he has “a special responsibility to protect the health of the [IT] programs’ more than 100 million beneficiaries as well as the congressionally authorized tax dollars used to fund” them.
Grassley cites reports he’s heard about “difficulties and challenges associated with HIT implementation,” including “administrative complications,” “formatting and usability issues,” “computer errors stemming from the programs themselves,” and problems with “interoperability between programs.”
More specifically, he raises concerns that “when [providers] report such problems to their facilities and/or the product vendors, their concerns are sometimes ignored or dismissed.” Often, he writes, “this is attributed to alleged ‘gag orders’ or non-disclosure clauses in the HIT contract that prohibit health care providers and their facilities from sharing information outside of their facilities regarding product defects and other HIT product-related concerns.”
Questioning the “lack of a national system for reporting product errors or failures and adverse events associated with the use of such products,” Grassley makes clear in his letter that his mandate as a senator is to ensure that patients are treated safely and that tax dollars are “appropriately spent on effective and interoperable HIT systems.”
The list of 31 providers Grassley contacted is on the next page.
The 31 providers, which have been asked to respond in depth to Grassley’s letter “by no later than Feb. 16, 2010,” are:
- Banner Health
- Brigham & Women's Hospital
- Case Western Reserve University Hospital Health System
- Catholic Healthcare West
- Cedars Sinai
- Children’s National Medical Center
- Geisinger Medical Center
- Hackensack Hospital
- HCA TriStar
- Intermountain Healthcare
- Indiana University Hospital
- Jefferson Regional Medical Center
- Kaiser Permanente System
- Marshfield Clinic
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- Mayo Clinics
- Memorial Hermann Healthcare System
- Methodist Hospital of Indiana
- North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
- Palo Alto Medical Foundation
- Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital
- Saint Mary Mercy Hospital
- Seattle Children’s Hospital
- Stony Brook University Medical Center
- Trinity Hospital System
- Tufts Medical Center
- University of California San Francisco Medical Center
- University of Pennsylvania Health System
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
- University of Virginia Medical Center
- Vanderbilt University Hospital
