Electronic health records found more reliable than manual chart review
Electronic health record technologies can allow hospitals to make data-based decisions quicker and more reliably than manual chart review, according to a recently published study.
“Electronic health records (EHRs) have been shown to improve health care documentation, assist in clinical decision-making, reduce errors and improve patient safety, patient satisfaction and the standard of care,” James E. Feng, MD, and colleagues wrote. “Despite this rapid growth, data collection continues to be performed by manual chart review, whereby data are abstracted and recorded in electronic or paper spreadsheets by hand. As a result, modern-day studies are prone to human error, increasing the potential for ... errors.”
In a retrospective cohort study of 100 unique patient encounters of venous thromboembolic events after total joint arthroplasty, investigators performed a manual chart review of EHRs with medical record numbers. Both data sets were algorithmically compared for discrepancies and evaluated for systematic error rates between patient encounters and data variables.
Results showed an average transcription error rate of 9.19% per patient encounter and 11.04% per data variable. The included systematic error rate was 7.41%, and the excluded systematic error rate was 5.79% per patient encounter and 5.44% per data variable. Average time for manual data collection was reported at around 10.3 minutes vs. 58 seconds for electronic query. Manual chart review yielded an overall error rate of 10%.
“Computer-based tools for data query can improve the speed, reliability, reproducibility and scalability of data retrieval, allowing hospitals to make more data-driven decisions,” Feng and colleagues concluded.
Collapse
Read more about