Hospital Turns Away Ambulances When Computers Go Down

CurtMonash writes "The Indianapolis Star reports that Tuesday Morning, Methodist Hospital turned away patients in ambulances, for the first time in its 100-plus history. Why? Because the electronic health records (EHR) system had gone down the prior afternoon — due to a power surge — and the backlog of paperwork was no longer tolerable. If you think about that story, it has a couple of disturbing aspects. Clearly the investment in or design of high availability, surge protection, etc. were sadly lacking. But even leaving that aside — why do problems with paperwork make it necessary to turn away patients? Maybe the latter is OK, since there obviously were other, more smoothly running hospitals to send the patient to. Still, the whole story should be held up as a cautionary tale for hospitals and IT suppliers everywhere."

Comments

Re:David Carradine Has Died, He Was Delicious

[mcgrew]

Holy crap, I thought you were trolling. Well, it's offtopic but damn...

David Carradine Dies. No wonder "Wild West Tech" wasn't on History Channel last Sunday morning.

Damn. They didn't mention Long Riders, a historically accurate portrayal of the James Gang, with the Carridine brothers playing the Youngers and the Keaches playing the James. That's one of my favorite westerns.

In other offtopic obituary news, blues great Koko Taylor has died also. Sad day for blues fans.

Re:they don't

[dunkelfalke]

You are using the wrong strawman here, buddy, all four times. I know why vaccinations are important and wish they were compulsory everywhere.

You cannot know it, but my mother is a medical doctor working at an actual hospital. Paperwork is the evidence of treatment so unless you pay cash the insuranse won't pay anything unless all the papers are filled.

Re:Nurse != Secretary

[cromar]

I haven't laughed that loud at something on the internet in a very, very long time.