Physician Used EMRs and Decreased Malpractice Claims
Medical professional practices using electronic skilled records (EMRs) saw a lowering of malpractice claims, according in a recent study.
The study titled “The Marriage Between Electronic Health Documents and Malpractice Claims”–conducted simply by Harvard Medical School experts was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine–tracked groups of Massachusetts medical doctors who had previously recently been surveyed in 2005 and 2007.
Physicians were covered by insurance several durations and utilized EMRs different amounts of time. Thus, the amount of insured years was calculated for every single physician following and before EMR re-homing. The researchers then utilized Poisson regression to identify whether EMR use was associated with malpractice says, modeling the rate of malpractice claims annually in periods with and with no EMRs.
With the 189 doctors surveyed in both 2004 and 2007, 27 had been named in at least one malpractice claim. In sum, 33 of the 275 physicians who reacted in 2005 and/or the year of 2007 incurred a total of 51 unique claims. Forty-nine of those claims had been relevant to events occurring ahead of EMR adoption; two had been associated with events occurring following EMR adoption.
The effects suggested that the “implementation” of [EMRs] may reduce malpractice says and, at least, appears certainly not to increase claims, inch in line with the study’s authors.
