Rush University Medical Center has filed suit against one of its health IT vendors, claiming that its patient monitoring system didn’t work as promised and may have put patients in danger.
According to a story in the Chicago Tribune, Rush spent $18 million installing the Infinity Acute Monitoring Solution system from Telford, PA-based Draeger Inc. between 2012 and early 2016. The Infinity system included bedside monitors, larger data aggregating monitors at central nursing stations, battery-powered portable monitors and M300 wireless patient-worn monitors.
However, despite years of attempting to fix the system, its patient alarms were still unreliable and inaccurate, it contends in the filing, which accuses Draeger of breach of contract, unjust enrichment and fraud.
In the suit, the 664-bed hospital and academic medical center says that the system was dogged by many issues which could have had an impact on patient safety. For example, it says, the portable monitors stopped collecting data when moved to wireless networks and sometimes stole IP addresses from bedside monitors, knocking the bedside monitor off-line leaving the patient unmonitored.
In addition, the system allegedly sent out false alarms for heart arrhythmia patients with pacemakers, distracting clinicians from performing their jobs, and failed monitor apnea until 2015, according to the complaint. Even then, the system wasn’t monitoring some sets of apnea patients accurately, it said. Near the end, the system erased some patient records as well, it contends.
Not only that, Draeger didn’t deliver everything it was supposed to provide, the suit alleges, including wired-to-wireless monitoring and monitoring for desaturation of neonatal patients’ blood oxygen.
As if that weren’t enough, Draeger didn’t respond effectively when Rush executives told it about the problems it was having, according to the suit. “Rather than effectively remediating these problems, Draeger largely, and inaccurately, blamed them on Rush,” it contends.
While Draeger provided a software upgrade for the system, it was extremely difficult to implement, didn’t fix the original issues and created new problems, the suit says.
According to Rush, the Draeger system was supposed to last 10 years. However, because of technical problems it observed, the medical center replaced the system after only five years, spending $30 million on the new software, it says.
Rush is asking the court to make Draeger pay that the $18 million it spent on the system, along with punitive damages and legal fees.
It’s hard to predict the outcome of such a case, particularly given that the system’s performance has to have depended in part on how Rush managed the implementation. Plus, we’re only seeing the allegations made by Rush in the suit and not Draeger’s perspective which could be very different and offer other details. Regardless, it seems likely these proceedings will be watched closely in the industry. Regardless of whether they are at fault or not, no vendor can afford to get a reputation for endangering patient safety, and moreover, no hospital can afford to buy from them if they do.
