Electronic Patient Records May Cause Medical Errors

When a bad result occurs during medical care there may be a culprit hidden from view. Even though electronic health records have been proposed as one way to reduce medical errors, their design can contribute to errors as well. Melonie Nance, M.D., at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation: “The way doctors work, and the way we think about patient problems and diseases is often completely mismatched with the way things are presented in electronic records.”