U.S. senator probes hospitals about healthcare IT issues

Jan 24, 2010

A U.S. senator has sent a letter to 31 hospitals requesting feedback about problems with their healthcare IT systems and asking them to report reticence or failure by healthcare IT vendors to promptly fix problems with HIT software.

The primary purpose of the January 20 letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, is to gather information from hospitals regarding perspectives and experiences with healthcare information systems.

However, in a press release, Grassley said that his survey of hospitals is based on concerns brought to his attention in recent months, including administrative complications, formatting and usability issues, errors, and lack of interoperability among different systems.

Noting that some healthcare IT products are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), he noted that "there appears to be a lack of a national system for reporting product errors or failures and adverse events associated with the use of such products." Grassley wrote that because of this, problems with these products may go without remedy and prevent medical professionals from providing quality care.

Grassley also asked the hospitals to advise if they were contractually restricted by gag orders or nondisclosure clauses in their contracts that prevented them from sharing information outside their facilities regarding product defects and other HIT product-related concerns.

Last fall, Grassley wrote directly to 10 major healthcare IT vendors regarding similar issues and concerns. His professional staff is currently reviewing the responses from these companies.

Healthcare enterprise networks and hospitals that were sent the letter are pioneering adopters of healthcare information technology and are some of the "most wired" healthcare facilities in the U.S. They include:

Banner Health (22 hospitals in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Nevada, and Wyoming)
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston
Catholic Healthcare West (40 hospitals in Arizona, California, and Nevada)
Intermountain Health Care (21 hospitals in Utah)
Kaiser Permanente System (35 hospitals in California, Colorado, Washington, DC, Hawaii, Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington)
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Mayo Clinics (three hospitals in Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota)
University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia
University of Pittsburgh
Vanderbilt University Hospital, Nashville, TN