Garbage In Electronic Data is Faster Garbage

How can medical document errors become easy to fix, everywhere the error lives, & fit in the workflow? Virginia Lorenzi and HL7’s Patient Empowerment Workgroup.

Proem

My father died when he was 45 of his second heart attack. I have multiple sclerosis. These don’t seem connected. Heart disease is hereditary, but MS isn’t. For me, heart disease and MS still connect. They connect because when I got diagnosed with MS, the neurologist said I’d had had MS for 25 years. I would have repeated episodes of falling, fainting, and being unable to get out of a tub. Because of my family history, I’d get a cardiac workup. The result would always be negative — twice or three times a year for 25 years. Spell, cardiac testing, results negative. I cannot get the incorrect diagnosis code of heart disease out of my many medical records. I really have MS.

Another story: I have a friend who is 5’3’, 5’4”, and weighs 137 pounds. Somebody typed in her record that she weighed 317 pounds. The weight was easy to fix the next time she went in she could not get the obesity diagnosis code off her problem list. While mine is annoying, you can imagine hers has severe implications with dosages and everything.

My obsession with documentation errors throughout my career accelerated with the start of electronic health…