![Reducing Error in Electronic Health Records]()
Patient safety organizations recommend that providers be limited to accessing one electronic health record at a time, to reduce the risk of writing orders for the wrong patient. Little evidence, however, supports this recommendation. William Southern, M.D., M.S., and colleagues at Montefiore Medical Center conducted a randomized trial of Epic electronic health record configurations, comparing error frequencies when 3,356 Montefiore providers were allowed access to between 1 and 4 patient records at a time. The results, published online on May 14 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), showed no increase in errors among providers randomized to access multiple records compared with providers given access to just one electronic health record at a time. Dr. Southern is professor and chief of the division of hospital medicine at Einstein and Montefiore. Jason Adelman, M.D., M.S., the first author and principal investigator on the study, is now at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.
Posted on: Wednesday, June 05, 2019