Google Health Teething Problems Misdiagnose
Posted Thursday 16th April 2009 by Tobias in SEM News.
Having taken a rather sceptical view of the motives behind Google’s push to digitise and centralise US medical records, recent events have provided sustenance for that scepticism.
Earlier in the year, US consumer groups raised a rather speculative alarm regarding the privacy implications of Google Health’s database of medical records; making unsubstantiated allegations that Google had tasked a team of lobbyists to push for the loosening of privacy laws in order for them to sell medical information to pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
A major part of the unveiled stimulus package to kick start the US economy is based on the digitisation of medical records. The jobs created will come in various administrative roles; mainly in the area of transcription. In short, the MD takes an audio recording of the patient’s medical situation then the information is typed into print form by transcribers.
The digitisation of this information provides a proposed central repository for all medical information, to enable designated users access, providing they have the security clearance. The teething problem has occurred in one critical area, the adhesion between the digital records and the health insurance codes.
Under the US healthcare system, each diagnoses comes with its own individual code, which in turn, provides the insurance company with the relevant categorisation of the individual’s policy; this is then represented in the price of the healthcare policy. The teething problem has come in the form of these codes being incorrect, coming with some rather serious consequences for patients and policy holders alike.
From obscurity, into the limelight, Dave deBronkart – a kidney cancer survivor found himself diagnosed with chronic lung disease and a plethora of other unsubstantiated medical conditions, since he has become a personification of the fallibility of digitized medical data. The reason given was that the insurance codes were transmitted to Google Health, not the doctor’s diagnoses which was described as a teething problem by Google Health.
Medsave.com takes a more sceptical view of the current situation; claiming that doctors can embellish insurance codes to boost provider payments. Other sources provide a list of other reasons for the inaccuracies, such as clerical errors and the limiting nature of medical vocabulary. In the spirit of innovation Google Health could step in to consult on how these issues can be resolved, however there has been no response yet.
At the beginning of the month Google Health partnered with CVS/pharmacy, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the states, implicating that Google’s priority seems to lie in gaining further corporate partners as opposed to making the service more user efficient. If Google’s motives were more transparent regarding what they are to gain as a company from the service then there might not be so much controversy surrounding Google Health.
On the Google Health ‘partners’ page the overall objective is cited as ‘trying to make healthcare safer and more efficient’ however when it comes to the US Healthcare system, profit is and always has been the name of the game. Currently all policy holders are advised to double check that all their medical records match the insurance codes as we wait for the digitised medical records saga to evolve further.
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