UnitedHealth Group Inc. has recalled the Picis ED PulseCheck EHR software used in hospital emergency departments in more than 22 states due to an error that caused lost doctor’s notes on patient prescriptions, Bloomberg reports.
The recall of the Picis ED PulseCheck software, which affected 35 emergency care settings started in June 21 after the company notified their customers of the problem, in which the software failed to display notes that doctors had entered manually rather than through a drop-down menu. UnitedHealth later reported the recall to the Food and Drug Administration that was made public on July 29th. An update to the program fixing the glitch was issued to customers shortly thereafter, and no adverse results were reported, UnitedHealth spokesman Kyle Christensen said.
In a statement Christensen said,”Picis completed a routine software update that resolved an issue in specific releases where some physician notes entered manually on a prescription were not included when the prescription was issued. Picis reported the resolution of this issue to clients and FDA in the normal course of business.”
Picis Inc., a Wakefield, Massachusetts-based company that UnitedHealth acquired in 2010 has reported six recalls involving EMRs since 2009, according to online database maintained by the FDA.
EMR companies are not required by the FDA to report safety issues. Ross Koppel, adjunct professor of sociology and medicine at the University of Pennsylvania said, “it’s admirable that the vendor reported this, but realize that this is one of the more obvious errors,”
