April 15, 2009, 10:37 AM — When kidney cancer survivor Dave deBronkart imported his medical records into Google Health, he was shocked to find multiple incorrect statements about his health. He was listed as having chronic disease and aortic aneurysm. His blood pressure medication, the records said, required "immediate attention."
Did Google load the wrong person's records? No. Instead, data punched into his hospital's billing system had been mistranslated back into his medical records. DeBronkart is far from alone, the Boston Globe reports:
Insurance data is already computerized and far easier and cheaper to download [than medical records]. But it is also prone to inaccuracies, partly because of the clunky diagnostic coding language used for medical billing, or because doctors sometimes label a test with the disease they hope to rule out, medical technology specialists say.
"Chronic lung disease" probably refers to the bronchitis deBronkart has had at various points in recent years. "Anxiety disorder" apparently referred to the anxiety deBronkart complained about during intensive chemotherapy, at a time he thought he might have months to live - though he has not experienced it before or since.
"Aortic aneurysm" was probably a slight widening of his aorta, not a blood-filled bulge that burst. Google also did not date-stamp many of deBronkart's problems, so at times it did not distinguish current issues (cancer) from past ones (low potassium levels two years ago). Some of the dates were wrong - his cancer diagnosis was months off.
Google Health can expose these mistaken records. But it doesn't always identify the source, a Google product manager told the Globe.
DeBronkart's blog post on the encoding of patient data demonstrates the complexity of the IT systems involved in medical records. Given the number of different standards and systems, it seems inevitable that mistakes will enter patients' records.
What can you do about your own records? Go to the hospitals and doctors you've visited in the past, and ask to see your records. John Halamka, CIO and dean for technology at Harvard Medical School, told the Standard, "If folks want to examine their paper record, they should visit the medical records department (often called Health Information Management) of their hospital. HIPAA requires that all patients be granted access to their paper medical record."
Electronic health records (EHR) have received a boost from the Obama administration, which has pledged to digitize all U.S. medical records by the year 2014. In addition to Google, tech companies that have announced major EHR or health technology initiatives in the past two years include Microsoft, Intel, and GE.
