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Hospitals and health systems have been regularly been affected by a plethora of problems - patient data integrity issues, medical identity theft, a lack of price transparency, the lack of proper interoperability, and more. However, some of the problems such as patient safety incidents, detrimental healthcare outcomes, medication errors, and patient mix-ups can be traced back to a specific problem - medical record errors. 

What are medical record errors? 

To put it simply, medical record errors cause data inconsistencies in EHRs that problems down the line - the latter contain wrong information about patients. For instance, a patient has a history of diabetes for 10 years, is taking medication, has had a small surgery, and their latest lab test results are attached to the EHR. Now, due to patient misidentification, medical record errors occur, and the existing data either gets mixed up with someone else’s record (overlay) or a new medical record gets created for the patient (a duplicate record).

Whatever the case is, it’s extremely dangerous for the patient and extremely costly for the healthcare provider. The patient won’t receive accurate treatment as physicians don’t have the proper knowledge at hand to make informed decisions. As a result, healthcare outcomes won’t be optimal, some of which will be leading to hospital readmissions and caregivers might even be penalized down the line - hospitals have to keep readmissions down, after all. 

To summarize, medical record errors cause patient data inconsistencies, are detrimental to patient outcomes, and are expensive for everyone involved. Quite understandably, they must be prevented at all costs, especially the common ones such as duplicate medical records and overlays.

Fortunately, RightPatient can help with that. 

RightPatient prevents medical record errors

RightPatient helps identify patients accurately with its touchless biometric patient identification platform, and by identifying patients right off the bat, it prevents duplicates and overlays. RightPatient helps improve healthcare outcomes, enhance patient safety, and avoid preventable medical errors.