A new study recently published in JAMIA examines the significant error rate present in the use of electronic health records (EHR). The investigation was conducted over four healthcare systems from two different EHR vendors (Epic & Cerner) and included twelve to fifteen physicians at each site. Each physician was evaluated through six clinical scenarios. Key error rates found in the different scenarios included: X-ray 16.7% - 25%, Tylenol: 0% - 30%, and Taper: 16.7% - 50%.
Politico e-Health reported on the article:
“STUDY — BAD EHR IMPLEMENTATIONS RISK LIVES: It's a well-known saw that EHRs can vary a lot between different hospital and practice sites, due to the custom implementations of the software. But those implementations might risk lives, a new JAMIA paper suggests, as the rate of errors when entering orders can vary extremely widely — sometimes reaching as high as 50 percent.”
The UNC Emergency Department was one of the four study sites. Dr. Saif Khairat, PhD was UNC’s site Principal Investigator. He collaborated with UNC Healthcare CMIO Dr. Don Spencer, MD and Epic@UNC team to build study cases; and UNC Emergency Department Medical Director Dr. James Larson, MD to recruit participants and conduct the study at the department office building.
The study was conducted by Raj M Ratwani, PhD, Erica Savage, MHA, Amy Will, Ryan Arnold, MD, Saif Khairat, PhD, Kristen Miller, DrPH, CPPS, Rollin J Fairbanks, MD, MS, FACEP, CPPS, Michael Hodgkins, MD, MPH and A Zachary Hettinger, MD, MS.
Click here to read the full article: https://academic.oup.com/jamia/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jamia/ocy088/5047907
Congratulations to Dr. Khairat and the UNC team on the success of their study and its impact.
