Thanks Obama! As usual, the media isn’t reporting WHY Texas Presbyterian Hospital mistakenly let Thomas Duncan go without quarantining him like they should have with Ebola. Remember the 2009 Obama stimulus? There was a provision in Obama’s 2009 stimulus law (according to CNS News) that required physicians and hospitals to adopt Electronic health records (EHR) “for each person in the United States by 2014.” Well, it’s 2014, almost 2015 and Texas Presbyterian Hospital followed the Obama stimulus guidelines. They have electronic health records as Obama’s stimulus required include “separate physician and nursing workflows.” The problem? There was a flaw in the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interaction.
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| Obama stimulus from 2009 is reason for Dallas hospital Error involving Ebola patient |
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When a sick Liberian man walked into Texas Presbyterian Hospital last month, “Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses,” the hospital said in a statement released Thursday night.
The man told a nurse he had come from West Africa, where an Ebola epidemic is raging.
“However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case.”
The hospital said its electronic health records include “separate physician and nursing workflows.”
The hospital said the Liberian man’s travel history was located in the nurses’ portion of the EHR, but — “As designed, the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow.”
“As result of this discovery, Texas Health Dallas has relocated the travel history documentation to a portion of the EHR that is part of both workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa.