FHI's Week in Review - 8/12/19 - EHR Hacked + Are Faux Meat Burgers Good for You?

Volume VI, Issue 32

Aug. 12, 2019

When an EHR is hacked by Russians

A disturbing post by urologist Daniel Ricchiuti, MD appeared in KevinMD on 8.10.19:

Any positives experienced over the past seven years of EHR at NEO Urology Associates were instantly negated this past week. Monday morning our practice screeched to a complete halt at the hands of a foreign hacker from Russia who demanded $85,000 ransom from our practice in Boardman, Ohio, United States of America. The hacker's leverage for cash was our precious patient files... During The Hack our entire practice could not send or receive faxes, call patients, receive phone calls from hospitals or even access patient files on our EHR. Three hundred fifty-plus patients visits were canceled without us being able to inform them that their appointments were canceled.

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According to Dr. Ricchiuti:

A career in medicine is innately filled with stressful situations. As doctors, we encounter complex decisions one after another, where the implications of those decisions will change the course of another person's life. Doctors have faced stress and have dealt with these stresses in their own ways for centuries. However, the contemporary physician is asked to deal with these stressful situations in addition to an equal amount of "non-medical" issues throughout the day. The introduction to information technology has added yet another complex blanket of stress that encompasses physicians.

They might be better for the planet, but are plant-based burgers good for you?

Lisa Drayer reports for CNN on 8.9.19:

If you're looking for a vegetarian burger instead of a beef-based burger, you're in luck these days. Two popular options include the Impossible Burger, in over 5,000 restaurants in the United States, Hong Kong, Macao, and Singapore, and the Beyond Burger, available at more than 35,000 locations, including the meat aisles in supermarkets. These burgers are the makings of food chemistry at its finest, and include ingredients that attempt to mimic the flavor, aroma and even the "bleeding" color of meat.

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"I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist," states healthcare pundit Tara Pihn. "But, with ingredients like textured wheat protein, leghemoglobin (soy), loads of salt, soy protein isolate, heme, pea protein isolate, cellulose from bamboo and methylcellulose, I am pretty sure the answer to the reporter's question in the headline is 'NO,' these foods are not healthy," she adds. "They are mass-produced, processed foods posing as quality nutrition and these companies are exploiting naive consumers."

Mental illness and gun violence

Megan L. Ranney and Jessica Gold (an emergency physician and a psychiatrist) report for TIME on 8.7.19:

In a 24-hour period during the first weekend of August, two mass shootings - one in El Paso, Texas and the other in Dayton, Ohio - left 31 people dead and 53 injured, as of writing. In between "calls for action" and the need for "thoughts and prayers," legislators across the political spectrum, ranging from Democratic presidential candidates like Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang, to Republicans like the Governor of Texas and President Donald Trump, were quick to assign blame to mental illness-despite ample evidence that gun violence is not a mental health problem.

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According to article's authors:

In fact, people with mental health disorders are more likely to be victims of a violent crime... Mental illness is certainly a problem in this country. But hate is not a mental illness. Neither is murder. Our patients, friends, and family members with mental illness deserve better than to be America's scapegoat.