Patient data outage exposes risks of electronic medical records

Dozens of hospitals across the country lost access to crucial electronic medical records for about five hours during a major computer outage last week, raising fresh concerns about whether poorly designed technology can compromise patient care.

Cerner Corp., a leading supplier of electronic health records to hospitals and doctors, said "human error" caused the outage July 23 that it said affected an unspecified number of hospitals that rely on the company to remotely store their medical information. Last week's episode highlighted some of the risks as hospitals and doctors' offices nationwide undergo a massive upgrade in the way they handle medical records. As part of the 2009 economic stimulus, the Obama administration is spending more than $27 billion to speed the switch to computerized patient records.