Malpractice Claims rising with Electronic Health Record Use

Malpractice Claims Rising with Electronic Health Record Use

Malpractice claims involving EHRs that contributed to patient injury have increased over the past decade, says a new study by The Doctor’s Company.

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Electronic health records (EHRs) are here to stay. According to data released recently by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), more than 50 percent of the nation’s physicians have implemented electronic health records. The use of EHRs in hospitals and practices is continuing to rise. But there seems to be a dark side to this.

Our medical transcription company had already reported on how electronic medical records can lead to malpractice errors. PR Newswire recently reported on a new study by The Doctor’s Company (TDC) which found that malpractice claims involving EHRs that contributed to patient injury have increased continuously over the past decade.

While digitization has transformed the healthcare sector within the adoption of EHRs, it has also increased concerns about the sharing of patient data, patient safety, and management of medications. The latest research is the second of its kind by TDC, the nation's largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer. The study found that claims involving EHRs rose from just two incidents from 2007-2008 to 161 from 20112016. Several factors are thought to have caused this rise in claims, including the rapid implementation of a system which necessitated an intensive revamp of the traditional medical record system. However, the study author notes that, rather than being the primary cause, the EHR is just a contributory factor in a claim.

Key Findings of Latest TDC Research The new TDC study compares 66 claims made from July 2014 through December 2016 with the results of the first study of 97 claims from 2007 through June 2014.The key findings of the new study as reported by PR Newswire are as follows: •

System factors that contributed to claims including technology and design issues, lack of integration of hospital EHR systems, and failure or lack of alerts and alarms, grew by 8 percent.

•

User factors, such as copy-and-paste errors, data entry errors, and alert fatigue, fell 6 percent.

•

More EHR-related claim events occur in patient rooms and fewer occur in hospital clinics/doctors' offices, ambulatory/day surgery centers, labor and delivery, and emergency rooms.

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Hospital clinics/doctors' offices remain the top location for these events.

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Family medicine and nursing showed decreases in claims, with internal medicine, hospital medicine, and cardiology showing marked decreases among specialties involved in claims.

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Orthopedics, emergency medicine, and obstetrics/gynecology showed increases in claims.

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The report cites Robert M. Wachter, MD, professor and chair, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco as saying, "This study makes an important contribution by chronicling actual errors, such as wrong medications selected from an autopick list, and helps point the way to changes ranging from physician education to EHR software design”.

Study Highlights Dark Side of EHR Implementation EHR platforms offer several advantages, allowing health providers to store,access and share medical information in real time and improves collaboration between various medical teams. They help with documentation and billing as well as patient management and electronic prescribing. However, the report points out that there is still a lot to do with regard to the integration of the technology.

Participants at a HCCA Physician Compliance Conference listed the concerns that the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) has about EHRs as follows: •

Authorship integrity risk: Record entries can be borrowing from another source or author and past documentation can be represented or displayed as current. This may misrepresent or inflate the nature and intensity of services provided.

•

Auditing integrity risk: Lack of adequate auditing functions may make it impossible to detect when an entry was changed or borrowed from another source and misrepresented as an original entry by an authorized user.

•

Documentation

integrity

documentation

using

risk:

Automated

templates

or

clinical

similar

data

tools

entry

with

and

visit

predetermined

documentation components poses risk of errors.

•

Patient identification and demographic data risks: Automated demographic or registration entries can cause errors in patient identification, and compromise safety and quality of care. It can also increase risk of fraudulent activity involving patient identity theft or providing unjustified care for profit.

Experts point out that awareness of basic EMR risks can provide opportunities for organizations to implement proper procedural and technical safeguards to avoid or alleviate them.

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Role of Medical Transcription Outsourcing in Mitigating EHR-related Risks Partnering with a reliable medical transcription service company can help health care providers can void EHR data entry errors. In fact, many physician practices and hospitals rely on the EHR-integrated documentation solutions provided by an experienced medical transcription company. This ensures that patient encounters are transcribed and edited in fast turnaround time.

Medical transcription companies can ensure EHR integrity and minimize data entry risks that can lead to malpractice claims. Their teams of certified medical transcriptionists and documentation specialists collaborate with physicians to provide accurate, high-integrity documentation. These experts can identify gaps, errors, and inconsistencies that may compromise patient health and compliance goals. As EHR adoption advances, healthcare providers can benefit from the support of a client-focused, technically-savvy medical transcription company to ensure quality clinical documentation and avert many EHR data entry related malpractice issues as they focus on care.

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