On February 17th GE reported an important product issue with unsigned Clinical List items that affects all versions of GE Centricity Practice Solution and Centricity EMR. Please see below for details.
Impact Consideration
GE Healthcare recently became aware that document signing is occasionally not signing all Clinical List items (problems, medications, prescriptions, immunizations, in-office medication administration, allergies, advanced directives, care plans, observation terms, and orders). In such cases, these Clinical List items related to a patient chart are not displayed to the user even though they are saved in the database.
To determine the root cause of this issue, we’ve analyzed data from a select set of customers and we’ve discovered that this issue has been occurring, although at a low rate, for a few years. This issue was not introduced in SP11 but rather the frequency of these occurrences has increased as a side effect of SP11. All of the historical data still exists in the database.CPS_Bug.jpg
Recommended Actions for Customers on SP11
GE Healthcare has developed a patch to reduce the frequency of occurrences to pre-SP11 levels. The patch is currently under evaluation at six customer sites. Five of those customers have received and continue to evaluate the patch and one customer will deploy the patch in their production environment on Wednesday, February 17th. After the evaluation of the patch is complete, we will release the patch to all SP11 customers. We are targeting the patch to be released within one week and we recommend that customers on SP11 install this patch when available. Please continue to read to understand additional actions to take.
Recommended Actions for Customers on SP12 (Limited Availability)
GE Healthcare is developing a patch to reduce the frequency of occurrences to pre-SP11 levels for SP12 users. The patch is currently under development and is targeted to be ready in 2-4 weeks. We recommend that customers on SP12 install this patch when available.
Recommended Actions for All Customers on Centricity Practice Solutions Version 11.X, 12.X and Centricity EMR 9.5 & 9.8
GE Healthcare is designing and developing reports that will provide summary and detail level information on the unsigned Clinical List items. Additionally, we are creating scripts that will enable end user visibility to the impacted chart items. The scripts will have two parts, one that will auto-repair observation terms. The second part will present any additional clinical list items for provider decision support. On a long term basis, a report and accompanying scripts will be provided for identifying and managing unsigned Clinical List items such as medications, prescriptions, immunizations, orders and allergies.
Before the issue reports and auto-repair scripts are available, clinical list validations can be performed by re-opening and reviewing the chart document after signed. If clinical list updates are not displayed as expected, we recommend creating an append to add the absent information. As you are reviewing charts, be mindful of the rare occurrence of Clinical List items not being displayed.
Important milestones:
- Step 1: Communication with impacted customers
- Step 2: Reduce the frequency with a patch for SP11 – Target: within 1 week
- Step 2b: Reduce the frequency with a patch for SP12 – Target: 2-4 weeks
- Step 3: Reports to identify and tools to repair issues – Target: 2-4 weeks
- Step 4: Instantiate on-going processes with the tools provided in Steps 2-3 to identify issues and update charts appropriately
