EHR: A Bigger Role in Malpractice Claims

As electronic health records (EHR) usage has continued to spread across the globe, so too has the technology's part in malpractice claims, a new research found.

Design issues and lack of alerts are two contributing factors

The Doctors Company, a physician-owned medical malpractice insurer, found a constant increment over the previous decade in malpractice claims in which the utilization of EHRs added to patient injury.

From 2007 through 2010, there were only two claims in which EHRs were a factor. From 2011 through December 2016, in any case, that number soar to 161, as per David B. Troxel, MD, medical director at The Doctors Company in Napa, California. This is the gathering's second investigation of EHR-related cases.

Troxel noted in an announcement that the EHR is commonly a contributing element in a claim, as opposed to the essential driver.

The present investigation thinks about 66 claims produced from July 2014 through December 2016 with the aftereffects of the main investigation of 97 claims from 2007 through June 2014.

Compared to the research before, the new research demonstrates that the system factors that added to claims expanded 8%. These components incorporate technology and configuration issues, absence of combination of hospital EHR systems, and disappointment or absence of cautions and alerts.

Then again, client factors, for example, reorder mistakes, data passage blunders, and fatigue alert, diminished 6%.

Internal medicine, hospital medicine, and cardiology demonstrated stamped diminishes among fortes engaged with claims, while orthopedics, crisis medicine, and obstetrics/gynecology showed risen values, the research found.

The examination additionally noticed that hospital centers/doctors' workplaces remain the best area for EHR-related claim occasions.

Reception of EHRs has been generally quick. Data discharged the previous summer demonstrated that lone 4% of U.S. hospitals didn't utilize EHRs. The Doctors Company research expressed that the technology "can possibly progress both the act of better medicine and patient security."

"But, there are constantly unforeseen outcomes when new innovations are quickly embraced - and the EHR is no special case," as indicated by the investigation.