Hospital Accused Of Firing Nurse For EMR Safety Complaints

The former chief nursing officer of a California hospital is suing her former employer, alleging she was “forced out” of her position after questioning the safety of a little-known EMR donated by a major financial backer of the facility.

The suit filed by nurse Autumn AndRa also names Dan Smith, whose company donated the Harmoni software now used by Sebastopol, CA-based Sonoma West Medical Center. AndRa is claiming that Smith, who has contributed millions in donations and loans to the hospital, has used the hospital as a test bed for his company’s defective system. Smith is president of the medical center’s board of directors.

In an interview with a local newspaper, AndRa said that the Harmoni system has had major problems since the day it went live. Among other issues, the EMR was doing a poor job tracking and updating medications and was “intermingling” medical information between patients, her suit contends. According to AndRa, she went to hospital CEO Ray Hino a week before her dismissal and told him that the system was not safe. (Hino told the newspaper that Harmoni was fine and that no patients had been harmed by the system.)

E-Health Records International Inc., which makes the cloud-based system, primarily serves hospitals outside the U.S., including facilities in the Congo, Jamaica, India and the Philippines. Smith, whose first software development success came when he sold a construction management system to Intuit, serves as the company’s CEO, as well as chairman of telemedicine firm Offsite Care Resources.

Other than that, he seems to have little documented experience as an HIT developer. His other major business venture seems to have been operating a French restaurant with his wife, which he closed after being unable to get back $5.8 million he loaned the hospital.

Regardless of whether AndRa prevails in her suit, I think it’s safe to say that she came out on the wrong end of some questionable political maneuvering by hospital leaders, perhaps including Smith himself. When a hospital is forgiven a large loan, and then fires an executive who raises safety questions about the EMR developed by the lender, eyebrows should be raised.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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