Is your staff overwhelmed by having to constantly fix EHR errors? Electronic health records were originally meant to avoid mistakes in patient documentation, but studies indicate that they are far from foolproof. TechTarget highlights how “researchers found that one in five patients found an error in their medical records.” They also note how EHR design could be partly to blame, as separate data indicated that “about a third of the errors the technology [was] supposed to detect.”
When not identified, these errors have the potential to severely impact your patient care and health outcomes. Let’s explore some of those risks in more detail, and how TriageLogic’s MedMessage Assist™ can help your team avoid them.
Consequences of EHR Errors for Patient Safety
Inaccurate records aren’t just headaches for your front office. They pose a real threat to patient safety and care. For example, an incorrect medication dosage or a missed allergy alert in an EHR could lead to adverse drug reactions, worsening patient conditions, and even life-threatening situations.
Some of the most common EHR errors include:
- Incorrect demographic information like addresses, phone numbers, or insurance details.
- Incomplete or inaccurate medical histories that could involve past diagnoses, surgeries, or medications.
- Mistakes in diagnostic data with lab results, imaging, or vitals.
- Discrepancies in medication lists that could contain conflicting information about what a patient is currently taking, as well as dosage and frequency.
These types of errors can complicate care by requiring providers to spend more time verifying information than seeing their patients. Making these corrections can also be a tedious process, from formal requests through administrative review and approval.
MedMessage Assist’s Mission: Accuracy on Every Patient Call
In the face of these challenges, it becomes clear that practices must do whatever they can to keep EHR errors to a minimum. TriageLogic’s MedMessage Assist (MMA) aims to substantially reduce these mistakes by leveraging the power of augmented intelligence.
In most medical practices, nonclinical operators are the first points of contact for patient callers and their requests. But these operators can also miss important symptoms and details that could indicate patients are experiencing more serious conditions than they think.
MMA can identify these instances and prompt operators with additional questions to ask patients in order to clarify their symptoms. It does this by analyzing the text that operators type in real time while they’re talking with patients over the phone. This means triage nurses have a better picture of what patients are experiencing, and how soon they need to call those patients back.
MedMessage Assist has been more effective than any nonclinical training, leading to more than 99% accuracy on every call. Best of all, this solution is freestanding — it can be used on its own, or integrated with your in-house software. All information can be shared directly and securely with the appropriate EHRs without having to worry about incomplete, duplicated, or incorrect data.
MMA is as concerned with efficiency and security as it is with accuracy: it adds minimal time to your patient calls; it’s self-teaching so that operators learn how to use it quickly; and it meets all requirements for HIPAA compliance.
Reducing EHR Errors Through Accurate Medical Intake
By ensuring that patient symptoms are recorded correctly and thoroughly, MedMessage Assist streamlines the flow of accurate patient data. This creates a safety net for providers, especially when you consider that most use past medical histories to make their diagnoses and determine patient care plans. Those who depend on EHRs for critical decision-making can be confident in the information that their operators are sharing.
EHR Improvement Starts With the First Call
Improving your medical records starts with your nonclinical team. Let TriageLogic enhance your medical message intake — and, by extension, your EHR management.
Contact us today to schedule a free demo of MedMessage Assist, and learn more about how this solution can benefit your practice!
About TriageLogic
TriageLogic is a URAC-accredited, physician-led provider of top-quality nurse telehealth technology, remote patient monitoring, and medical call center solutions. Founded in 2007, the TriageLogic Group now serves more than 22,000 physicians and covers over 42 million lives nationwide.
