Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 269 posts

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#141

Post by kube-system »

nradov wrote: post #102
dkarras wrote: post #90

As a non-American I'm also curious about the mass necessity of opioid painkillers to begin with. From what I hear, people are prescribed opioids post surgery etc. which is bonkers to me as a foreigner. I'm a middle aged person and I have never seen anyone using opioid painkillers anywhere in my life. They give stuff to you when you are having surgery, and when you are in hospital's care, but something very extraordin…

In 2007 an oral surgeon gave me a prescription for opioid painkillers after a wisdom tooth extraction, just in case I needed it for pain. The pain wasn't very bad and I never filled the prescription, but in retrospect giving me that prescription in the first place was just crazy! Another doctor gave my wife an opioid painkiller prescription upon hospital discharge after a normal childbirth, just in case she needed it…

Those 'just in case' scripts are usually combined medications that are short enough in duration that they don't pose much risk of dependency.

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#142

Post by ohithereyou »

mtgx wrote: post #59
codeulike wrote: post #5

[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller. Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times. The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a s…

People are going to go to prison for this, right? Or has all white crime been made legal in America? Because I can't tell anymore.

Do you mean 'white collar' crime?

I think you'll find the likelihood of going to jail for any crime is inversely proportional to the amount of money the accused has in the bank.

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#143

Post by ohithereyou »

ska wrote: post #121
mtgx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are going to go to prison for this, right? Or has all white crime been made legal in America? Because I can't tell anymore.

Or has all white crime been made legal in America? Can you think of a time when it was significantly more likely for something like this to end up with execs in jail?

I can think of a time about 125 years ago that it was significantly more likely that execs of the company would end up with a bullet in their head or their loved ones kidnapped and ransomed for such shenanigans. (Note; This is obviously bad and I'm not advocating for it, but it's more than just "no jail time and you have to sell your third and fourth house to pay the fine".)

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#144

Post by penagwin »

JshWright wrote: post #80
dirktheman wrote: post #23

If I would know that my MD is using a free, cloud based, ad-supported platform to keep my health records I'd be rather ticked off...

The age old adage... If you're not paying for the product, you are the product...

I'd think Americans are paying enough for their Healthcare to not be the product but....

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#145

Post by [deleted] »

horsawlarway wrote: post #126
aqme28 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that. This is unethical design. It's a design that probably killed people.

I'd argue it's actually MUCH worse than simply killing people (which is already pretty staggeringly bad). The constant push to privatize and let market forces drive medical interactions is CRUSHING trust in the system. Let's take an example patient, Sally. Sally goes to see her doctor, she's got some minor knee pain, but nothing serious. As a result of this profit motivated system, her doctor is likely to try to pres…

[deleted]

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#146

Post by mikehotel »

codeulike wrote: post #5

[when opening a patients records] a pop-up would appear, asking about a patient’s level of pain. Then, a drop-down menu would list treatments ranging from a referral to a pain specialist to a prescription for an opioid painkiller. Click a button, and the program would create a treatment plan. From 2016 to spring 2019, the alert went off about 230 million times. The tool existed thanks to a secret deal. Its maker, a s…

Leaving ethics aside, 230M alerts to prescribing doctors for $1M seems like a steal for pharma co.

“Employees estimated internally that the drug company could add almost 3,000 patients and bolster opioid sales by as much as $11.3 million through the partnership. Under the contract, the drugmaker paid Practice Fusion almost $1 million”

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#147

Post by slumdev »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #100
conanbatt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's made in Visual Basic, and it literally cannot interact with its own versions. Hospitals have different versions of the same system in the same building and cant exchange information. All EMR's suck though. (note: I made one)

”It's made in Visual Basic” We shouldn’t feed the illusion that old stacks are inherently bad and that new stacks will magically solve all problems.

Nobody makes this complaint about C++ (which is older) or Java (which is almost as old.)

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#148

Post by Ididntdothis »

slumdev wrote: post #147
Ididntdothis wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”It's made in Visual Basic” We shouldn’t feed the illusion that old stacks are inherently bad and that new stacks will magically solve all problems.

Nobody makes this complaint about C++ (which is older) or Java (which is almost as old.)

Sure people do.

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#149

Post by JackRabbitSlim »

dkarras wrote: post #90

As a non-American I'm also curious about the mass necessity of opioid painkillers to begin with. From what I hear, people are prescribed opioids post surgery etc. which is bonkers to me as a foreigner. I'm a middle aged person and I have never seen anyone using opioid painkillers anywhere in my life. They give stuff to you when you are having surgery, and when you are in hospital's care, but something very extraordin…

You're premise is likely incorrect. As a non-American there is a very good chance there is an opiate available over the counter with no prescription in the form of codine.

https://www.oecd.org/health/health-systems/opioids.htm

It's not an American problem, its a "First World" problem.

Re: Health-records software pushed opioids to doctors in secret deal with drugmaker

#150

Post by logfromblammo »

heavyset_go wrote: post #120
logfromblammo wrote: post #98

They put pop-up stealth advertisements, targeted at your doctor, into your electronic medical record, so that he or she would get you addicted to painkillers. Software developers did this. For drug money. That's just terrible, isn't it? They shouldn't have done that. But even if the developers had ethical concerns, they had no recourse but to quit, and be replaced by someone else--who might get six months of work in…

> I would do that job. I would take that money. I don't get a stupidly-inflated Valley salary with bonus RSUs, and I have bills to pay. I don't have a union that can protect me from nonsense. I know it's wrong. I would do it anyway, because I have been screwed by every company I have ever worked for, such that I learned that my ethics don't matter. Money matters. You've identified a perverse incentive that requires p…

The Uncle Ben Parker Contrapositive applies: with no power comes no responsibility.

As long as "at will" employment exists, then no contract terms exist, and no labor law can stick to the employer, so long as they are willing to lie whenever there is no contradictory evidence. If the employee gets fired for asserting their rights in the law, and the employer can say it was an "at will" termination, the employee has no effective recourse or remedy.

If you criminalize the work that I do, you are just getting me fired for no HR-disclosable reason (again), and the company will have that work done in another jurisdiction.

If you aren't putting c-level executives and/or board members in prison, and forcibly restructuring or dissolving corporations, you aren't doing anything to protect me, the worker. And if you are placing legal liability on me, personally, I definitely will not testify against my superiors. I know the feces roll downhill.

I was about to be incredulous, but I actually do believe that you would rather have me fired and put in prison, and my dependents thrown in the gutter, than to have a software workers' union or stronger federal labor laws that might possibly protect me from an arbitrary dismissal if I tell my boss "What you are asking me to do is unethical." Thanks for that.

Post reply on HN