Enlisting Patients To Improve EHR Accuracy

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

eGEMs (Generating Evidence & Methods to improve patient outcomes) has released a study confirming methods to help improve medical record accuracy.

Goals

The study had three goals:

• Assessing if patients can improve medical record accuracy through effective engagement via a networked personal health record
• Assessing workflow efficiency and reliability of the patient feedback process
• Assessing the impact of patient feedback on the accuracy of medical records

Key Findings

• Patients were eager to provide feedback on medications.
• Patients provided useful and accurate information online.
• Processing of feedback requires software algorithms and human interpretation.
• Acceptance of online patient feedback is made more likely by an overall supportive ehealth environment.

Of the patients who were requested to fill out medication feedback forms, 30 percent completed the forms, with 61 percent of them requesting discontinuations or a change in frequency or dosage of the medication indicated in their EHR (electronic health records). An additional 62 percent requested new medication. In total, 89 percent requested changes to their medication records.

Opportunities For Solutions Providers
In reviewing the medication forms, pharmacists communicated with patients and other pharmacists, using patient feedback to update the EHR. On a large scale though, the study suggests that decision support rules would be needed to automate processing certain types of medication feedback. The study also suggests that structured form fields to capture information would be highly useful in processing patient feedback, and scaling the process to accommodate more patients and a larger system.

The solution tested in the study also incorporates patient-directed personal health records as used to increase data quality across a community, as well as acknowledges the potential use of HIE (health information exchange) solutions to help build more comprehensive views of patient data across multiple providers.

Methods

The study used patient focus groups comprised of users, nonusers, and partial users of the feedback form; interviews with providers and pharmacists, observations of patients, and quantitative analysis of data from patient feedback and pharmacist medication reconciliation logs.

To review the study in its entirety, visit AcademyHealth here.