Medical liability will be a moving target as EHR systems evolve
Date: Aug 25, 2011CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Medical liability case law referencing IT systems is in scant supply for lawyers of both malpractice plaintiffs and defendants drawing up trial game plans. That will change, though, as the proliferation of systems such as electronic health records, clinical decision support and smartphone messaging expands across the U.S. health care system, Harvard School of Public Health professor and attorney Michelle M. Mello said at the World Congress 3rd Annual Leadership Summit on mHealth.
In a presentation, Mello outlined IT's effect on medical liability for hospitals. One particularly rough patch is during an EHR implementation. Consider how your hospital will use paper during a paper-to-electronic workflow transformation, especially during the transition phases. Current case law points to having multiple redundancies in communications for physicians to fall back on and planning for contingencies in case a system doesn't function as it should during its initial startup.
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