New evidence supports fears that a common physician documentation shortcut can jeopardize patient safety. When docs copy and paste template text into a patient's electronic health record.
Clinicians reported that while copying text from a template and pasting it into a patient's electronic health record streamlined workflow, it also created the potential for inaccurate information and made it difficult to parse out new relevant patient information, according to a report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The results of the study aligned with recommendations by the Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety that called on hospitals to make copy-and-paste material easy to differentiate and offer staff training on the appropriate use of the function.
"Using outdated information, truncating information, or including a large amount of potentially extraneous information can all lead to safety issues," Lorraine Possanza, patient safety, risk and quality program director at the ECRI Institute said in a release highlighting the NIST report’s findings.
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ECRI has urged providers to increase awareness of potential safety concerns associated with copy-and-paste, highlighting instances where "note bloat" has led to diagnostic errors. The Office of Inspector General has also warned that the Department of Health and Human Services has not adequately addressed fraud concerns fueled by EHR copy-paste functionality.