Health IT may bring unintended consequences

The Philadelphia Inquirer: As the Obama administration nudges the health system toward electronic medical records, researchers have identified some unintended consequences. "Penn researchers compared two groups of doctors on their use of two drugs with potentially dangerous interactions: the blood thinner warfarin and an antibiotic, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole." The EMR blocked combinations for half the patients and allowed them for others. "The computerized 'stops' had the desired effect; fewer prescriptions of both drugs together were made by the first group. But the study was stopped early because of four cases in which patients had long delays in getting the needed drugs" (Goldstein, 10/4).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.