EHR System Error Allowed First Ebola Patient To Be Released From Texas Hospital
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Bloomberg reports Ebola patient Thomas Duncan was able to leave his Texas hospital due to a fault with the electronic health records. Duncan was the first fatality inside the United States.
According to Bloomberg, “doctors never saw a nurse’s note that an emergency room patient with fever and pains had recently been in Africa, and he was released into the community with Ebola”—the EHR system “didn’t flag the information to the physician.”
Health policy professor Ashish Jha says doctors should not rely solely on EHR, and the physicians should have known to ask more follow-up questions regarding the patient’s travel history. Thomas Duncan was the first fatality in the United States
Summary by MedicalGroups.com
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