Stave off malpractice suits
In today's litigious healthcare climate, malpractice lawsuits can herald negligent credentialing claims that spell trouble for medical staff leaders and MSPs. Share the following tips with the practitioners on your staff to head off these legal sticky wickets.
Produce thorough documentation
Document all care-related conversations, including those with patients, their family members, and other practitioners. Be sure to include corrections to initial chart entries as addenda. Never delete or try otherwise to revise the existing record, which can raise suspicions should the documentation make its way to court.
Share notes
Showing patients their chart—and providing a plain language explanation of what they're looking at—promotes transparency, an engaged care dynamic, and the use of an objective tone in practitioners’ notes. Of course, common sense rules apply when granting this access. Never let a patient directly modify his or her chart. If he or she does need to add information, include an addendum.
Sidestep EHR errors
Faulty EHR entries can have long-lasting implications for a patient’s care, misinforming collaborating practitioners' decisions and potentially driving treatment off course.
Avoid common slipups, such as:
- Taking risky shortcuts (e.g., copy and pasting from templates and auto-populating form fields)
- Turning off computer-generated warnings, which can preempt dangerous dosing errors or drug interactions
- Selecting the incorrect option from a drop-down menu
Source: Medical Economics