title: Minimizing electronic health record patient-note mismatches.
abstract: We measured the prevalence (or rate) of patient-note mismatches (clinical notes judged to pertain to another patient) in the electronic medical record. The rate ranged from 0.5% (95% CI 0.2% to 1.7%) before a pop-up window intervention to 0.3% (95% CI 0.1% to 1.1%) after the intervention. Clinicians discovered patient-note mismatches in 0.05-0.03% of notes, or about 10% of actual mismatches. The reduction in rates after the intervention was statistically significant. Therefore, while the patient-note mismatch rate is low compared to published rates of other documentation errors, it can be further reduced by the design of the user interface.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York 10032, USA.
authors.forename: Adam B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Wilcox
authors.forename: Yueh-Hsia
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hripcsak
mesh_terms: D004282:Documentation; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D006801:Humans; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000517:prevention & control*; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D011786:Quality Control; D014481:United States; D014584:User-Computer Interface