Today the Boston Globe has published an article about Dave deBronkart’s problem with claim data in his Google Health PHR. I think it is awesome that the main stream press is picking up on the problem of using billing data for clinical work!
A little digging reveals that there is an much better post over at e-patients.net that details exactly what his experience is.
I have been aware of this problem for some time. For me it all started when CVS Minuteclinic imported a ‘condition’ of ‘Blood Pressure Screening’ as ‘Active’ condition onto my record.
Why did they do this? Because their system must have an ICD code for the purposes of billing for my procedure, even though I payed in cash.
One of the best things about being deeply involved in both FOSS Health IT and a blogger, is that when something hits the main stream press, I get to prove that ‘I told you so’ with reference to posts that are months or even years old. Heck, I bet that ‘I told you so’ feelings are a full 25% of my motivation to blog! That puts it way ahead of ‘joy of shameless self promotion’ and ‘muuust raaannt’ as motivation components!
The problem here is that the current diagnosis onotology system in the United States is based on billing data. With the migration to ICD 10, this problem will only get worse. Most doctors do not really understand how to use ICD 9, and ICD 10 is muuuch bigger.
I got wind of this article from the Modern Healthcare Health IT Strategist.
-FT
Very enlightening post. I’ve had a similar experience with my own Google Health and Walgreens accounts integrating. Billing records for my kids’ meds have shown up in my account.