By Patrick Monette-Shaw : westsideobserver – excerpt
“Help, I lost my patient!”…… at a minimum 1,746 San Franciscans have been dumped out-of-county from SFGH and Laguna Honda Hospital and a handful of other private-sector hospitals in San Francisco.”…
That painful cry from a certified nursing assistant frantically searching for a patient she had lost track of when I worked at Laguna Honda Hospital for a decade is still painful to remember, even though it would have been somewhat comical to witness at the time had it not involved patient safety.
But what happens when a Public Health Department loses track of its patients who have been dumped (discharged) out-of-county?
That’s nowhere near “comical.” In my eyes, it borders on criminal neglect, intentional obstruction, or governmental incompetence.
San Francisco’s Department of Public Health claimed way back on September 16, 2020 that its new replacement Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) database — named Epic — that was rolled out and went live on August 3, 2019 and has cost the City at least $167.4 million, does not track patients discharged out-of-county. Wait! What?
I suspected then DPH’s claim was probably an outright lie, however unintentional. Ironically, it was an epic-sized lie. The Westside Observer first reported on this in June 2021…(more)