Kaiser's massive $4 billion Epic EMR installation has been suffering from serious technical problems throughout its life, despite management claims to the contrary, a new published report says. These concerns have led the California Department of Managed Health Care to request information on the installation, something it does prior to potentially launching a formal investigation. The highly critical report comes as Kaiser begins rolling out the Epic EMR to about three dozen more hospitals. Right now it's only up in two, Baldwin Park Medical Center and South Sacramento Medical Center.
According to the investigative report, which appeared this week in the Los Angeles Times, Kaiser's Health Connect installation has worked so badly that among other problems, patients have been listed in wrong beds, clinicians have gone without crucial clinical information and system outages have delayed care in the ED. What's more, the system has experienced downtime in excess of 20 percent in some locations, according to an internal Kaiser report, a problem attributed to poor design of Health Connect's server infrastructure and backup power supplies.
Fore more information on the Kaiser EMR battle:
- read this Los Angeles Times article