Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.

Now, the health care connection.  As a result of the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to health information systems as part of the stimulus program, those companies who had a head start in implementing electronic medical records quickly found themselves in demand.  Of all those companies, Epic is the most successful. Forbes notes, “By next year 40% of the U.S. population–127 million patients–will have their medical information stored in an Epic digital record.”  (Here in Massachusetts, the biggest convert was Partners Healthcare System:  “System development and implementation will occur over a 10-year period and represent a capital investment of approximately $600 – 700 million.”  Elsewhere, notes Forbes: “The biggest win: a $4 billion project to digitize medical records for health care giant Kaiser Permanente.”

What is striking about this company is the degree to which the CEO has made it clear that she is not interested in providing the capability for her system to be integrated into other medical record systems.  The company also “owns” its clients in that it determines when system upgrades are necessary and when changes in functionality will be introduced.  And yet, large hospitals sign up for the system, rationalizing that it is the best.  For example, Partners said, “The new health care landscape will challenge us to engage in population health management, improve the coordination of health care, and accept financial risk for the care of our patients. This new system will enable us to meet those challenges.”

But it can hurt to go down this path.  In another article, Forbes notes:

Customers, such as New Hampshire’s Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center are feeling the pinch. DHMC which implemented Epic last year at a cost of $80 million, expects a weak operating performance in 2012, partly because of expenses related to Epic.

Now, re-read the definition of the Stockholm syndrome and see if it isn’t apt.  But it doesn’t have to be this way, as I have noted in quoting an article by Kenneth Mandl and Zak Kohane in the New England Journal of Medicine:

It is a widely accepted myth that medicine requires complex, highly specialized information-technology (IT) systems. This myth continues to justify soaring IT costs, burdensome physician workloads, and stagnation in innovation — while doctors become increasingly bound to documentation and communication products that are functionally decades behind those they use in their “civilian” life.

We believe that EHR vendors propagate the myth that health IT is qualitatively different from industrial and consumer products in order to protect their prices and market share and block new entrants. In reality, diverse functionality needn’t reside within single EHR systems, and there’s a clear path toward better, safer, cheaper, and nimbler tools for managing health care’s complex tasks.

Here’s the ultimate corporate risk for Epic.  Now that it controls this big a piece of the American market–paid for by federal appropriations–if something ever goes wrong (e.g., a coding or decision support error that results in harm to patients), you can expect a bunch of Congressional committees to come down on the firm like a ton of bricks.  It doesn’t matter which political party is in the majority.

People will ask:  “Isn’t an EMR as much of a medical device as the ones regulated by the FDA?  Isn’t the handling of prescription drugs by EMRs as much a part of drug dispensing as the drugs themselves?  Shouldn’t EMRs be regulated by the federal government for that reason, too?  How did this firm get such a big share of such a critical market with no government review?”

Paul Levy is the former President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and blogs at Not Running a Hospital. He is the author of Goal Play!: Leadership Lessons from the Soccer Field and How a Blog Held Off the Most Powerful Union in America.