Electronic health records (EHRs) were supposed to transform patient care. To some extent, they have – but not always been for the better.
While EHRs have streamlined communication between practices when they have compatible systems and made information much more accessible to the patient, “copy-paste” errors in digital charts have led to dangerous mistakes.
What are “copy-paste” errors in EHRs?
“Copy-paste” errors occur when health care providers duplicate information from one section of a patient’s electronic health record and paste it into another – without verifying the accuracy of or updating the information.
On the surface, this seems like an efficient way to avoid rewriting data that remains relevant. However, medical information is fluid and constantly evolving. What was accurate for a patient a month or even a week ago may no longer reflect their current health status.
For example, copying a list of a patient’s medications or pasting a diagnosis note from a previous visit might seem like a great time-saver. However, if the medication list hasn’t been updated to reflect recent changes or the diagnosis isn’t reassessed based on new symptoms, outdated or incorrect information can be perpetuated in the patient’s medical history to their detriment.
It’s even worse when wholly incorrect information gets put in a patient’s chart – like medical history that belongs to someone else but jotted down by a hurried provider by mistake. That information can become “chart lore” that is nearly impossible to eradicate from the whole EHR, putting patients at even more risk of faulty diagnoses.
There’s another danger: These bloated electronic records can stop a physician from reading charts carefully enough, and that can lead to missed interventions, overlooked test results and more. A recent study found that content is so frequently copied and pasted in EHRs that more than half of 100 million notes in patient charts were duplicated, and much of the information was unnecessary.
Unfortunately, patients have little control over their own EHRs. If you or your loved one suffered a medical mistake because of an error in an EHR or a physician failed to carefully review the chart and that led to an issue, it may be time to investigate your legal options.
