Introduction
Picture this: You've been sued, and now the plaintiff attorney has the right to send in an expert to sit at your computer and examine information in your electronic health record (EHR). Besides any mistakes you might have made, system-wide bugs or design flaws that lead to data inconsistencies could be found and held against you in the discovery phase of a malpractice lawsuit.
Doctors are becoming increasingly aware that EHRs can create certain malpractice risks. However, an expert in EHR and liability says there is a new category of malpractice risks in EHRs that most doctors have never considered. These include EHR system issues that you were never aware of and didn't cause.
"Every aspect of EHR selection, implementation, and use may be examined in the course of medical malpractice discovery to uncover the source of the incident, or undermine the records that are being presented in defense of the malpractice claim," says Ronald B. Sterling, CPA, MBA, national EHR expert, Silver Spring, Maryland, and author of Keys to EMR Success(Greenbranch Publishing; Phoenix, Maryland; second edition, 2010). "Anything could be a malpractice issue, from the product itself, the way it was set up, or how you've been using it."
