Entry tags:

abu ghraib, joe darby, kaiser patients, kaiser permanente, kaiser tech, kaiser workers, whistleblower

Those Kaiser IT Drama Queens
More Kaiser EMR outages are detailed in this article. After asserting that Kaiser physicians don't care about improving the EMR as much as he does, Kaiser's Interim CIO Turkstra lowers his goal for EMR uptime to 99.7% (in the talking points document Kaiser circulated about Justen, the goal is held to be 99.9%). 99.7% is actually pretty low - remember, incidents don't "average out" - an average of 4 minutes a day could mean half an hour during the week.

The article describes several "critical patient issues", including a baby endangered in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit), but Turkstra dismisses the wording of the incident report as "dramatic". Yep, those tech support folk are some of the most drama-prone people in the working world. Every time someone loses an email at Kaiser, 15 guys run in little circles, screaming and tearing their hair out. ;-)

In other news, a doctor describes frustrations with the Kaiser system from the patient point of view:

Dr. Min Su said he found it hard to believe when patients expressed frustrations in dealing with the health system for which he worked. This week, the Modestan found himself in those patients' shoes, battling the system after an insurance flap caused his premature twins to be split between two hospitals [Kaiser wanted the weaker of two twins to be moved to a Kaiser hospital]....The Kaiser health system did not literally "require" the transfer, but a case manager said the parents would have to pay for the charges [if one of the twins remained at an outside hospital]...

..."I heard a lot of patient complaints about Kaiser," Su said. "Now, I realize they provide good care for the healthy patients, but when the big one comes, they don't care. They just care about saving money."

...As a former physician for Kaiser, Su said, he was able to appeal to officials in Kaiser management to resolve the issue, something that is rarely possible for regular patients...."I got nowhere going through normal channels," he said. "I can see it is frustrating for people who are looking for help and don't know where to go."

Lastly, has anyone been reading the story of Abu Ghraib whistleblower Joe Darby? This poor guy can't even go back to his own hometown because everyone thinks he's a rat who betrayed his buddies for handing over PICTURES OF PEOPLE BEING TORTURED FOR KICKS. What is wrong with this country? Silencing whistleblowers (including discouraging them through loud humiliation and abuse) and hiding such atrocities helps perpetuate them. And this isn't just about a few people who were unluckily subjected to torture - though that should be reason enough in a civilized society - it's about whether we want the respect and admiration of the rest of the world. That respect and admiration has to be earned: the world is not a high school where Americans automatically get the privileges of being pretty and popular just because they can afford a nose job and a new car.

Update: A little birdy pointed out that the Business Times included a wonderful wrap-up of the mystery of the phony press release on Friday.

If it turns out to be a complete con job, it's a darn good one: Not only did the writer capture PR-speak perfectly -- he/she also knows an awful lot about Kaiser. All of the names and titles check out. Korn/Ferry, the search firm listed, is the one Kaiser used last time its top job was open. The media contact number listed is the real one. And Kaiser frequently uses PR Newswire to pump out its actual news releases.