Patients wrongly told they've got cancer in SMS snafu
- Reference: 1672775111
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/01/03/askern_medical_cancer_message/
- Source link:
The message went out to patients of the medical facility – there are reportedly about 8,000 of them – on December 23, 2022. It asked patients to fill out [1]a DS1500 form , which is used to help terminal patients expedite access to benefits because they may not have time for the usual bureaucratic delay.
About an hour after thoroughly alarming recipients of the not-so-glad tidings, the medical facility reportedly apologized in a follow-up text message.
[2]
"Please accept our sincere apologies for the previous text message sent," the message reads, as [3]reported by the BBC . "This has been sent in error. Our message to you should have read, 'We wish you a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.' In case of emergency please contact NHS 111."
[4]
[5]
On Tuesday, the surgery took its apology public via its Facebook page.
"While no data was breached, we can confirm an admin staff error was made, for which we apologized immediately upon becoming aware," Askern Medical Practice said in [6]its post . "We would like to once again apologize sincerely to all patients for the distress caused. We take patient communication, confidentiality and data protection very seriously."
[7]
The surgery characterized the errant text message as both an administrative error and a computer-related error, without clarifying just how the mistake occurred.
[8]Rude awakening for O2 customers after network runs surprise test of emergency mobile alert system
[9]Man paralyzed from neck down uses AI brain implants to write out text messages
[10]Harvard boffins build multimodal AI system to predict 14 types of cancer
[11]Google Health licenses its AI breast cancer screening tool to a medical biz
"We also pride in looking after our patients," the medical facility's apology continued. "We would like to reassure all our patients that the text message was a mistake (it was an internal patient supportive task amongst admin staff to act upon) and not related to you as a patient in any way. This was an isolated computer-related error for which we are extremely regretful, and steps are being taken to prevent a reoccurrence."
Askern Medical Practice did not immediately respond to an inquiry to clarify how the clerical-computer snafu had occurred.
According to a 2018 UK survey [12]study published in BMJ Quality & Safety, about a quarter (~23 percent) of 2,471 patients raised concerns about their care at the National Health Service. Among the 1,155 incident reports provided by 579 patients, "'Communication' was the most frequently occurring category with a total of 251 patient incident reports (~22 percent)," the study says. ®
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[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-factual-medical-reports-guidance-for-healthcare-professionals/the-special-rules-how-the-benefit-system-supports-people-nearing-the-end-of-life
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y7SzkF0fJ0MzDrB35cGgKQAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-64116668
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y7SzkF0fJ0MzDrB35cGgKQAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y7SzkF0fJ0MzDrB35cGgKQAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.facebook.com/people/Askern-Medical-Practice/100064120321413/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y7SzkF0fJ0MzDrB35cGgKQAAAMw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/11/o2_emergency_alert/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/13/brain_implant_typing/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/09/ai_cancer_multimodal/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/29/google_health_ai_cancer/
[12] https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/27/9/673
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: This should be
And why did they even think about spamming people with a Christmas message anyway? That's not part of their job.
Re: This should be
It's worse than just a cancer ciagnosis. Metastsis indicates that the probability of a cure is pretty low.
More money for the NHS?
More money rarely fixes incompetence
Re: More money for the NHS?
No, Nick. No. Don't be that guy.
Re: More money for the NHS?
I want more money to go to the NHS, but this is not the kind of problem that is caused by a lack of money. I'm speculating, but think this scenario is at least plausible:
GP practice decides to use its autonomy to independently purchase an SMS management service.
The partners/admin have no idea what this should cost, or what features they actually need, or even who in this sector are vaguely competent/credible. Why would they? Practising medicine, or managing an office, don't include effectively tendering for ICT services as one of their core duties.
Then, a janky excrescence that barely compiles is purchased, and/or staff are inadequately trained in its use. Somehow, a .csv of the entire list of patients is double clicked in the file selector for the "Message Patients" menu item, instead of selecting the "Message this Patient" option.
Re: More money for the NHS?
It's hard to avoid "janky excrescence" in the medical software world.
Sicked of canned responses
"We take patient communication, confidentiality and data protection very seriously"
Well, no, you really don't.
Purely conjecture on my part, but I wonder if the person(s) responsible for sending the text message had a template already preloaded with the medical equivalent of "Moscow in flames, missiles headed towards New York, film at eleven" black-humour gag message.
And who would ever think it a good idea to send any kind of sensitive medical information via SMS?
They should have sent "You are going to die, eventually." . At least that would have been the truth.
Then they could also have argued that the new AI confused future events between long-term endings and short term festivities when asked to come up with a good formulation to describe the future .
8000 patients for 3 doctors? out of how many others? I looked up the practice. Something not quite right with those numbers.
https://www.askernmedicalpractice.nhs.uk/practice-information/meet-the-team/
Also rated as good with good reviews.
I'm an analyst I always question all numbers.
Elsewhere on their site, they state they have working there: "1 full time salaried doctor and 8 contracted sessional doctors who worked at the practice for more than six months" .
I don't know if this is "normal" or not.
Ours has over 15,000 patients with 2 part-time doctors. :|
computer-related
"This was an isolated computer-related error for which we are extremely regretful, and steps are being taken to prevent a reoccurrence."
Well, of course it was.
Except, you know, computers do what they're told and rarely make such mistakes of their own volition. So there's someone responsible behind the scenes, and that person should probably be answerable for it, to explain how this happened and specifically what steps are being taken to "prevent a reoccurrence".
Computer wot did it!
"It's a computer error" means "we typed in the wrong shit and can't be arsed to fix it."
Is this common?
Not living in the UK, is sending something like a diagnosis via SMS common? Of any kind, so that some snafu like this could happen.
All we get here (Australia) is "your results have arrived, please call to set up a (tele-)consultation". Maybe they add an "urgently" when it's something bad. I therefore surmise that it'd be impossible to send out "you have the bubonic plague/gonorrhea/gnats" even by accident: it simply isn't in the list of messages.
This should be
a firing offence. No excuse for such a monumental screw up that no doubt caused considerable upset and anxiety to a large number of people.