What Do We Know About Medical Errors Associated With Electronic Medical Records?

By ROSS KOPPEL Recently, the Journal of Patient Safety published a powerful and important article on the role of EHRs in patient harm, errors and malpractice claims. The article is open access. Electronic Health Record–Related Events in Medical Malpractice Claims by Mark L. Graber, Dana Siegal, Heather Riah, Doug Johnston, and Kathy Kenyon.  

The article is remarkable for several reasons: Considerably over 80% of the reported errors involve horrific patient harm: many deaths, strokes, missed and significantly delayed cancer diagnoses, massive hemorrhage, 10-fold overdoses, ignored or lost critical lab results, etc. Central to this article’ contribution is its data source and an understanding of the direction of causation of the findings: These errors came to light not because a healthcare provider noted an EHR-related problem, but because the patient was harmed, the provider was sued and there was an insurance payment.  These data come from an insurance medical malpractice database; the harm caused the EHR-related problem to be discovered, not vise versa. Most studies of errors rely on self-reports, use of signal drugs (e.g., drugs to counteract overdoses), reports of near misses, hope that professional pride or allegiance will not prohibit reporting, etc. In other words, most errors are never, ever known. This data base, as the article’s authors note, reflects the miniscule fraction of harm that results in payouts. And very, very few harms are known, go to ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs