Electronic health records (EHRs) have long been touted as a
transformative tool in medicine. The data can be shared easily between the
patient and medical staff, medications can be automatically screened to ensure
safety, and a doctor’s scribbles can be changed to easily read text. All of
this good, however, is dependent upon the information in the EHR being
accurate.
Many EHR systems allow users to copy and paste information,
and according to one study, this can cause information to be incorrect or
outdated. The study,
done by a team at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, examined
2,068 progress reports for 135 patients in the ICU of a Cleveland hospital. The
reports were created by 62 residents and 11 attending physicians, and were
monitored over the course of five months using plagiarism detection software.
The team found that in 82% of the notes made by the
residents and 74% of the notes made by attending physicians, 20% or more of the
text was copied and pasted from pre-existing text from the patient’s records.
These reports are used by internal hospital staff to monitor patient progress,
but text containing a significant amount of pasted information may not be
helpful. In one case, doctors of a patient who was released and then readmitted
to the ICU couldn’t understand the previous progress reports. The pasted notes
gave no clues as to the original diagnosis, and the new doctors had to call the
diagnosing physician.
This study could signal that doctors are now using notes as
more of a method to document billing then as a method to communicate with other
health care staff.
The Reuters article can be found here.
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