The Institute of Medicine (IOM) will conduct a year-long study to identify best policies and practices for improving healthcare safety and reducing malpractice when using electronic health records. The study will focus on prevention of health IT-related errors, rapid reporting of patient safety concerns and methods to promote safety-enhancing features of electronic health records. After….
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Should You Read Your Own Medical Records? Yes!
Many patients (and a few doctors) continue to be amazed that the law requires that patients be able to obtain a copy of their own medical records. And reading them is good for your health, I and other patient safety advocates maintain. Here’s what I wrote on a New York Times blog about this: Getting….
Continue ReadingPatient Injuries and Deaths in Hospitals Are Under-Reported and Covered Up
One hundred thousand preventable deaths from medical errors in hospitals each year: That is the usual statistic cited by patient safety advocates. It comes from a 10-year-old report issued by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. The fact is, though, that the death and injury rate could be substantially higher. No….
Continue ReadingHow to Learn from Medical Mistakes
A column in the New York Times by Pauline Chen, M.D., relates how a colleague of hers named “Ed” crashed and burned on his way to becoming a general surgeon, seemingly because of his difficulty in learning from his own mistakes. The blog comments by both doctors and patients are revealing. Many make the point….
Continue ReadingMore Evidence for a Good Health Habit: Reading Your Medical Record
Evidence continues to pile up for why patients need to read their own medical records. A new study finds it is distressingly common for primary care practices, especially big ones, to fail to inform patients about abnormal test results. The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and was reported by Nicholas Bakalar….
Continue ReadingDr. John Hickner on Test Results and Avoiding Injury from Miscommunication
The NY Times Well blog has a podcast of Dr. John Hickner, professor of family medicine at the University of Chicago, discussing why patients should always call their doctors to follow up after having a medical test done. We have previously discussed the issue of medical test results getting lost in transmission: the patient will….
Continue ReadingCommon Testing Mistakes at the Family Doctor’s Office
A new study from the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care, and discussed in the NY Times Well blog, reveals common testing mistakes by primary-care doctors. Of course, the same kinds of errors can happen in hospitals and other health care settings. Out of close to the 1,000 mistakes experienced by 590 patients, the….
Continue ReadingGetting Control of Your Health Records
Alisa Miller at Nursing Online Education Database has an article on how to start taking control of your health records. “Taking control” in this case means storing, updating and sharing them in a way that is convenient for you. The article is chock-full of useful links on the following subjects: -what are the options for….
Continue ReadingGoogle, Medical Records and Privacy
Tara Parker-Pope has an article on the privacy implications of big companies like Microsoft and Google entering the medical records storage business. We have discussed this issue before, stressing the importance of patients needing convenient access to all of their medical records. Parker-Pope, however, discusses a potential downside to this development: a loss of privacy….
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