Review finds increase in EHR-related malpractice claims

"EHR-RELATED LAWSUITS INCREASE: A report out from The Doctors Company finds that between July 2014 and the end of last year, 1.6 percent of the malpractice claims filed against the 80,000 doctors it covers had significant EHR content. That was a modest increase — considering the growing use of EHRs — from the 0.9 percent of malpractice claims covering the period from 2007 through June 2014. Roughly half of the latest EHR-related claims were associated with user errors stemming from things like sloppy copy-and-paste habits, alert fatigue and workarounds. The other half, with some overlap, were attributable to system design and included data routing problems, inappropriate drop-down menus and failed clinical decision support software." -Politico