The janitor approached my office manager with a very worried expression. “Uh, Brenda…” he said, hesitantly.
“Yes?” she replied, wondering what janitorial emergency was looming in her near future.
“Uh…well…I was cleaning Dr. Lamberts’ office yesterday and I noticed on his computer….” He cleared his throat nervously, “Uh…his computer had something on it.”
“Something on his computer? You mean on top of the computer, or on the screen?” she asked, growing more curious.
“On the screen. It said something about an ‘illegal operation.’ I was worried that he had done something illegal and thought you should know,” he finished rapidly, seeming grateful that this huge weight lifted.
Relieved, Brenda laughed out loud, reassuring him that this “illegal operation” was not the kind of thing that would warrant police intervention.
Unfortunately for me, these “illegal operation” errors weren’t without consequence. It turned out that our system had something wrong at its core, eventually causing our entire computer network to crash, giving us no access to patient records for several days.
The reality of computer errors is that the deeper the error is — the closer it is to the core of the operating system — the wider the consequences when it causes trouble. That’s when the “blue screen of death” or (on a mac) the “beach ball of death” show up on our screens. That’s when the “illegal operation” progresses to a “fatal error.”
The Fatal Error in Health Care
Yeah, this makes me nervous too.
We have such an error in our health care system. It’s absolutely central to nearly all care that is given, at the very heart of the operating system. It’s a problem that increased access to care won’t fix, that repealing the SGR, or forestalling ICD-10 won’t help.
It’s a problem with something that is starts at the very beginning of health care itself.
The health care system is not about health.
