EMR

I’m concerned about errors in electronic medical records. I love my technology, I’m an early adopter. I participate in several national initiatives bridging the consumer and health technology – HIMSS (Health Information Management Systems Society)  eConnecting with Consumers Committee, Society for Participatory Medicine, the federal Automated Blue Button Initiative, TIGER (Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform), Patient Adherence Workgroup. I have a PHR (Patient Health Record) through Microsoft Health Vault and have enrolled in patient portals for all my physicians who have one. What worries me is the quality of the data in those systems. As a nurse, quality improvement expert, informaticist, leader, and  consumer, I know the opportunities for errors in data. Databases and electronic information are only as good as the information in them.  We all have our stories about frustration with erroneous data in our credit reports and how difficult it is to fix it. Health care data is the same only there’s more of it. Clinicians are challenged to correct mistakes in electronic data. Here is an article about clinicians correcting electronic data mistakes. As consumers expect and receive more and more access to their electronic health data, they will question the quality of some of that data. How will they be able to correct it? Correcting electronic data is complex and labor intensive. Here is an article about consumers correcting their records. Do any of you have experience with errors in your medical record, electronic or paper? Please share.