TEPR notes

Here are some interesting tidbits from the annual TEPR conference, which concluded Wednesday:

  • NextGen Healthcare Information Systems announced a partnership with British clinical decision support developer Isabel Healthcare. Isabel co-founder Jason Maude says that the deal creates the first direct link of diagnostic decision support to an ambulatory EMR product.Maude started the company with Joseph Britto, M.D., who was the attending physician when a misdiagnosis by a resident at a London hospital nearly took the life of Maude’s daughter, Isabel, at age 3. I wrote about Isabel Healthcare a couple of years back when I was on staff at a certain magazine that’s now dying a slow, painful death.

    The way Maude and NextGen CMO John Dulcey, M.D., described the diagnostic support engine this week reminded me of the misdiagnosis detailed in Atul Gawande, M.D.’s book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. Turns out that Gawande’s patient at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the young Isabel both had necrotizing fasciitis, aka flesh-eating bacteria.

    Maude says that Isabel, now 9, is mostly healthy, though she requires a series of skin grafts as she grows.

    After our discussion, Maude said he would get back in touch with Sorrel King, who founded the Josie King Foundation in memory of her own daughter, who did not survive a medical error at Johns Hopkins University. The Josie King Foundation is participating in the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives Campaign.

  • Allscripts Healthcare Solutions is publishing a book entitled The Electronic Physician: Guidelines for Implementing a Paperless Practice. Allscripts product management VP Stuart Scholly calls it a collection of best practices for EMR implementation compiled from company experts and customers.Allscripts itself, and not any specific individual, gets the author credit, though Scholly says the book does not even mention the company after the first chapter, so as not to have others take it as a sales tool.

    The book should be available on Amazon within a couple of weeks. It lists for $29.95, or $41.95 if you’ve got Canadian currency.