A recent article in Politico outlines the growing issue of electronic medical records leading to lawsuits. The advent of electronic records was heralded both as a safety and cost-saving development when they began in the 1990’s. The Affordable Care Act included provisions requiring the use of electronic records and even provided funding for smaller hospitals and clinics to utilize such systems.

Many different vendors jumped into the new market and there are now several different systems in place, which in itself has created problems for patients transferring to new hospitals or clinics. The goal initially was to have one system that everybody uses, so the patient’s records could follow them wherever they went.

Current malpractice cases that involve electronic medical issues are likely the tip of the iceberg as their use grows and the problems become more apparent. The Politico article quotes Dr. Michael Victoroff, a critic of electronic records systems. “This is kind of like the car industry in Detroit in 1965. We’re making gigantic, horrendous, unsafe machines with no seat belts, and they are selling like hot cakes. But there’s no Ralph Nader saying ‘Really?”

Medical purchasers of the electronic records systems sign contracts that exempt the manufacturer/vendor from most legal responsibility. So if a patient suffers an injury because of the system, it is the hospital or physicians whose liability coverage comes into play.

So far liability rates have not increased because an insured used such systems, but observers say this may well occur in the future. One of the major problems seen in electronic records is the “cut and paste” feature that allows care information to be repeated with the stroke of a key. If the original information is erroneous, that is sometimes repeated throughout hundreds or thousands of pages that are seen by health care providers who are far removed from the initial entries.

An example is an error about a CT finding of a nodule in the right lobe of the lung, which was actually the left lobe. Years later, when lung cancer is diagnosed, no one realizes that the lung cancer was already noted by chance in a CT scan. The subsequent records all repeated the same error.

The U.S. Health and Human Services department report says that that there has been a failure to assure that electronic records data are secure and accurate.

Maybe we now need a new Ralph Nader to blow the whistle on all of the problems created by electronic health records and force changes to occur.