Becker's Hospital Review

40 CIO / HEALTH IT Change Healthcare buys health-focused blockchain startup By Julie Spitzer C hange Healthcare has acquired Pokit- Dok, a platform-as-a-service company that uses advanced blockchain and ap- plication programming interface technologies. With the acquisition, Change plans to expand its Intelligent Healthcare Network, which serves about 2,200 government and commercial pay- ers, 5,500 hospitals, 900,000 physicians, and 33,000 pharmacies. Specifically, the company plans to leverage PokitDok's blockchain use cas- es as well as DokChain, a distributed network of transactions of both financial and clinical data. "This acquisition is about practical innovation to create a more connected, transparent and efficient healthcare system where patients con- trol their own information," said Kris Joshi, PhD, executive vice president and president of net- work solutions at Change Healthcare. "As the leader in blockchain for healthcare and with one of the most extensive open API market- places available, with PokitDok we are bringing together synergistic assets and technical ex- pertise for delivering additional capabilities to our customers and accelerated value to digital health markets." n Primary care physicians most likely to report EHR-related burnout, study finds By Jessica Kim Cohen E HR-related burnout hits some physician specialties more than others, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Researchers surveyed more than 4,000 physicians in Rhode Island during 2017 about their use of and attitudes toward health IT to as- sess how stress associated with these systems predicts their likeli- hood to report burnout. Nearly 2,000 physicians responded, 26 per- cent of whom reported burnout. Among EHR users, 70 percent reported they've experienced stress related to health IT, such as having little time for documentation or spending excessive time on EHRs at home. Physicians in primary care specialties, such as internists and family medicine physicians, reported the highest prevalence of EHR-re- lated stress. By contrast, less than 10 percent of anesthesiologists, radiologists and hospital medicine specialists reported measures of stress related to EHRs. "To me, it's a signal to healthcare organizations that if they're going to 'fix' burnout, one solution is not going to work for all physicians in their organization," said lead author Rebekah Gardner, MD, associate professor of medicine at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, R.I. "They need to look at the physicians by specialty and make sure that if they are looking for a technology-related solution, then that's really the problem in their group," she continued. n Medical record errors are common, hard to fix, report finds By Julie Spitzer P atients oen struggle to have errors in their medical records corrected, ac- cording to a CNBC report. About 70 percent of patient records have wrong information, sociologist Ross Koppel, PhD, told CNBC. For one patient — 20-year-old Morgan Gleason — the errors in her medical record claimed she had twice given birth and was diabetic. But she's never been pregnant, nor been diagnosed with diabetes, she told CNBC. When Ms. Gleason tried to have her records corrected, the hospital insisted she was wrong, she said. In fact, the hospital told Ms. Gleason that if she hadn't given her physician the in- formation, it wouldn't have been in her chart in the first place. It wasn't until Ms. Gleason made a written request for a correction of her record that changes were made. Most errors don't affect health outcomes, but some mistakes can be dangerous or even fa- tal. CNBC cited a study from Johns Hopkins that found more than 250,000 people in the U.S. die every year from medical mistakes. Other studies estimate the number to be upward of 400,000. Dr. Koppel, affiliated with Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania, suggested pa- tients have a hard time getting corrections made because physicians don't like to admit wrongdoing for fear they may be sued. He said patient distrust can also lead to misin- formation in their records, and that the U.S. needs stronger standards for properly match- ing patients with their medical record. When asked her thoughts on tech companies like Apple or Amazon getting into the med- ical records business, Ms. Gleason said pa- tients should be cautious. "I hope that companies in tech don't start looking at the text in physician notes and making determinations without a human or someone who knows my medical histo- ry very well," she told CNBC. "I'm worried about more errors." n

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