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State of Washington
Medical Quality Assurance Commission
Guideline
Title:
Physician and Physician Assistants’ Use of the Electronic
Medical Record
MD2015-09
References:
RCW 70.02.110
Contact:
Michael Farrell, JD, Policy Development Manager
Phone:
(509) 329-2186
E-mail:
Effective Date:
August 21, 2015
Approved By:
W. Michelle Terry, MD, FAAP, Chair (signature on file)
Observe, record, tabulate, communicate.
-Sir William Osler (1849-1919)
Background
It is critically important that physicians and physician assistants maintain accurate, timely, and
consistent medical records to ensure delivery of high-quality, safe, and integrated medical care.
The electronic medical record (EMR) offers a number of potential benefits over the paper
medical record. However, as with any innovation, there are challenges and potential hazards in
its meaningful use. The Medical Quality Assurance Commission (Commission) has recognized
several problematic documentation practices while using an EMR that may in some instances:
interfere with delivery of high-quality, safe, and integrated medical care;
impede medico-legal or regulatory investigation; or
be characterized as fraudulent.
In an effort to explain how the Commission will evaluate medical records in EMR format, it
establishes these guidelines for appropriate EMR use by physicians and physician assistants.
The Commission understands that evolution of the EMR will require collaboration between
entities that develop and purchase EMR systems and clinicians who use the EMR. With this in
mind, the Commission also offers suggestions about potential EMR improvements for software
developers and health care institutions, and believes that clinicians should be involved in
collaborative efforts with those entities to improve the EMR.
Following the enumerated guidelines and suggestions, a synopsis of the information used to
develop them is appended for further reference.
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Definitions
Electronic health record: An electronic health record (EHR) is an official electronic record
designed to contain and share information from all providers involved in a patient’s care.
Although often used interchangeably with EMR, technically, EHR refers to data that can be used
by authorized providers and staff from more than one health care institution. Unlike EMRs,
EHRs also allow a patient’s health record to move with them to other health care providers,
hospitals, and nursing homes, even across states. [1] Similar standards for documentation in
the EMR apply to the EHR, although current incompatibility between various EMR software
systems has slowed progress towards the goal of every individual having their own EHR.
Electronic medical record: An electronic medical record (EMR) is a digital version of the
traditional paper-based medical record for an individual patient. The EMR documents health
care that took place within a clinician’s office, single health care facility or health care system
[1] as well as other forms of communication (records of phone calls, emails, etc.) between the
health care team and the patient.
Medical record: Depending on the context, this term, medical record, may refer to
documentation of an encounter between a patient and a clinician or a compilation of a
patient's medical information (history, care or treatments received, test results, diagnoses, and
medications taken, etc.). It may otherwise be known as the medical chart or, when it is a
collection of paper records, the “hard chart” from a clinician’s office, health care institution or
system.
Guidelines for Physicians and Physician Assistants
The following guidelines, which are not necessarily exhaustive, are intended to inform clinicians
concerning the appropriate use of an EMR, and to indicate how the Commission will evaluate a
medical record, including those records that are the product of an electronic system. The
Commission’s expectation is that the patient record in an EMR should reflect the same or
improved content and functionality as that produced in traditional formats, and that it will be
held to essentially the same standard. As with any breach of the standard of care, the failure to
adhere to the standard of care in maintaining a medical record that results in a potential for or
actual patient harm may be subject to disciplinary action by the Commission.
1. Every clinician using the EMR must ensure:
a. authorized use and compliance with institutional privacy and security policies;
b. a timely, accurate, succinct, and readable entry [2];
c. consistency and accuracy between various aspects of a record; and
d. assumption of ultimate responsibility for trainees’ and scribes’ documentation.
2. Clinicians must ensure that the medical record appropriately and accurately reflects the
patient’s voice, condition, services provided, and includes the context of the patient’s
comprehensive history in such a way that another clinician can safely and easily assume
care of the patient. Retention or re-entry of inaccurate, inconsistent, or outdated
information in the EMR from historic entries should be avoided.
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3. Clinicians’ actions and decision-making should be accurately reflected in their
documentation.
4. Documenting aspects of a clinician-patient interaction that did not transpire, such as
indicating that components of a physical examination were performed when they were
not, even when it occurs inadvertently because of EMR design or function, may be
considered fraud. Similarly, when documentation about an aspect of the clinician-
patient interaction is not present, the assumption is that it did not occur.
5. It is important to distinguish those portions of the history that were obtained by the
note writer from those that were copied or carried forward from another clinician’s
note.[3] Concerns about “clinical plagiarism” or fraudulent billing may arise when
appropriate and accurate attribution of copy-paste or carry-forward information is
missing from an EMR note.
6. In documenting the medical record, clinicians should consider that patients increasingly
have access to and will read their own medical record. Where possible, avoid overly
technical or judgmental language in the EMR.
Suggestions for EMR Software Developers and Healthcare Institutions
1. Clinicians and clinical information specialists have an important role to play in
development, decision-making, evaluation and improvement of EMR systems.
2. EMR systems should result in a patient record that is organized, concise, and easily-
readable. Lengthy and redundant information in the EMR, a source of common clinician
complaint, makes it difficult for other clinicians to identify data within the EMR that is
relevant to actual patient care.[4]
3. The primary goal of the EMR is to promote high-quality, safe, and integrated health
care. Other roles, such as documentation to support coding and billing, are secondary.
4. EMR systems should be compatible to allow seamless transfer of electronic medical
information within and between health care institutions.
5. It is essential to have capacity within EMR systems to correct errors as soon as they
come to light, and thereby prevent their perpetuation.
6. As patients increasingly have access to their EMR/EHR, they will undoubtedly find
information within the medical record that is erroneous or with which they disagree.
There should be a system in place within healthcare institutions to respond to patients’
questions and concerns that arise from review of their EMR. [RCW 70.02.110]
7. Software supporting EMR clinical documentation should be designed/constructed for
the type of provider who will use it (e.g., specialty, training) and the context in which it
will be employed (e.g., admitting, consulting, ambulatory). It should automatically
attribute information to each author.[2]
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8. The medical record serves many audiences who need to be considered in the design
and implementation of EMR systems. To meet their potential, EMRs should
incorporate comprehensive decision support that:
a. leads to improved patient outcomes;
b. ensures safe transitions of patients from one clinician, facility, or
office to another;
c. allows easy tracking and reporting of patient care metrics and
outcomes; and
d. promotes patient-centered communication between patients
and the health care system.[4]
9. Health care institutions should consider having mechanisms in place to monitor
documentation quality and clinician satisfaction with the EMR, and to identify changes
to support improved usability, validation, integrity, and quality of data within the
EMR.[2]
10. The EMR should be designed for maximum portability and interoperability of
information to benefit the patient and the public health. Full integration into the
Washington State Health Information Exchange provides benefit to the patient
requiring treatment when away from their medical home and provides meaningful data
to assess population health. Technology vendors should design their systems with
these functions as standards and institutions should mandate these functionalities as
standard requirements for their implemented systems.
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of
observation, and for some it is quite as difficult to record an
observation in brief and plain language.
-Sir William Osler (1849-1919)
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Appendix
Synopsis of Information Considered in Developing Guidelines
As of 2015, clinicians’ use of the electronic medical record (EMR) has largely replaced that of
the paper medical record. While the EMR offers advantages over paper records, the
Commission has reviewed numerous complaints directly or indirectly related to the EMR.
These complaints have led to concerns that current EMR systems, implementation, or use may:
(1) interfere with delivery of high-quality, safe, and integrated health care (2) impede medico-
legal and/or regulatory investigation (3) potentially be characterized as fraudulent.
Because the Commission is charged with promoting patient safety and enhancing the integrity
of the profession of medicine, specifically that of physicians and physician assistants, these
guidelines are intended to review appropriate use of the EMR by these professionals and to
encourage a greater role for clinicians in the decision-making and improvement efforts around
the EMR systems used in their clinical practice.
Examples of Complaints Received by the Commission
In review of complaints received from patients, other clinicians, malpractice claims, and health
care institutions, the Commission is concerned about problematic features of current EMR
implementation and use. We offer the following fictitious examples of EMR-related problems,
which are based on cases reviewed by Commission members:
A patient complains a clinician documented a complete physical examination in
the EMR when only a focused examination of a patient’s rash had been
performed.
Under the physical examination section of a patient’s EMR, “tympanic
membranes within normal limits” is explicitly stated, but in the assessment, the
patient is described as having a “right acute otitis media.”
An error in a CT report about a mass in the right kidney is subsequently
corrected to indicate that the mass is in the left kidney. The original diagnosis of
right kidney mass is carried forward in the EMR problem list, leading to a wrong-
site surgery.
A primary care physician forgets to include a patient’s bleeding disorder in the
EMR problem list following his first appointment with the patient. The
incomplete problem list is carried forward without review or update for
inclusion in numerous other documents. During major surgery two months
later, the patient suffers a massive hemorrhage. The surgeon was unaware the
patient had a bleeding disorder.
A clinician complains that her colleague copies and pastes the assessment
portion of patients’ EMR, including detailed medical decision-making, from
other physicians’ notes and then bills at a higher level than his actual work
would support.
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A patient files a medical malpractice claim after delay in diagnosis of a brain
tumor. The physician says that she performed a complete neurologic
examination, which was normal, but the EMR documentation for the neurologic
portion of the examination only states “Patellar reflexes 2+ bilaterally.”
A judge in a medical malpractice case found the EMR inadmissible because it
contained so much redundant and irrelevant information.
History of the Medical Record
The medical record, as an entity documenting an encounter between a patient and a clinician,
is a relatively new concept. Prior to the turn of the 20th century, patient case reports were
written retrospectively, primarily for the purpose of teaching [5], with less emphasis on
continuity of care. In the early 1900’s, real-time documentation describing patient history and
treatment was an emerging format, but patient care data were scattered and disorganized. A
first step towards improving the quality and utility of medical documentation occurred in 1907
when assigning a unique number to each patient and consolidating all data for that patient into
a single record was introduced. [5]
As medical education and the medical profession progressed following the Flexner Report in
1910 [2], it became necessary to document a patient’s history for continuity of care and to
accommodate growing involvement of medical and surgical specialists. In 1918, the American
College of Surgery initiated a requirement that hospitals maintain records on all patients so that
their content could be used for quality improvement. [5]
Throughout the 20th century, standards for formatting of the medical record continued to
evolve. The Problem Oriented Medical Record (POMR) was introduced by Dr. Lawrence Weed
in 1968. [5] The initial intent of the POMR was as an educational tool to help trainees organize
their decision-making and treatment plan around each of a patient’s separate medical
problems. [6] [7] However, the POMR gained widespread acceptance among clinicians at all
levels as did the SOAP (Subjective-Objective-Assessment-Plan) note format, which was derived
from the POMR. [8] Additionally, within health care institutions and specialties, standards have
emerged for documenting various types of encounters between clinicians and patients (e.g.,
History and Physical, Operative Note, Ambulatory New and Return Patient Notes, Interim and
Discharge Summaries).
Requirements for clinical documentation were dramatically altered by release of the Evaluation
and Management (E&M) guidelines by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in
1995 and 1997. [8] Intended as a measure of cognitive (as opposed to procedural) services, the
E&M guidelines specified the format and necessary components to be included in the medical
record to support specific CPT codes for billing. The complexity of these requirements led many
clinicians to rely on medical record templates, which were designed to promote compliance
with E&M guidelines.
Until the late 20th century, the medical record was largely recorded on paper, either written
longhand, or dictated and then subsequently transcribed. In part driven by approximately $30
billion of federal incentive payments over the last five years, the rate of EMR adoption has since
risen quickly, [9] such that clinicians and health care institutions not currently using EMR are
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now outliers. The EMR has specific goals (Table 1) and serves the needs of a variety of
audiences (Table 2).
Table 1: Goals of the Medical Record
1
(as informed largely by Shoolin, et al [7])
Tell the patient's unique story as it relates to the patient’s concerns (“the patient
voice”)
Demonstrate diagnostic thinking and decision-making process undertaken by the
clinician.
Provide clinical information to allow covering or consulting colleagues to maintain care
and make informed decisions regarding further care
Support coordinated longitudinal plans of care and care transitions within and across
organizations
Provide a clear and easily understood summary of the encounter, including findings and
recommendations, to the patient or the patient’s designated representative
Provide clinical information to drive accurate Clinical Decision Support
Support and identify the quality of care provided to patients
Satisfy reasonable documentation requirements from payers
Create the legal business record of the patient care facility
Support population data collection and research
Create the legal record of a patient’s medical and surgical care
Meet legal, accreditation, and regulatory criteria
1
These goals are similar to the intentions of “Meaningful Use.” For additional background, refer to:
http://www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/meaningful-use-definition-objectives
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Table 2: Medical Record Audiences
Patients and their designated representatives.
2
Fellow clinicians
Other members of the health care team
Researchers
Public health systems
Payers
Legal counsel
Courts, juries and medical review/regulatory bodies
Current EMR Implementation
Potential benefits and advantages of the EMR. There are potential benefits of the EMR,
particularly as compared to paper medical records. Certain capabilities of the EMR may present
both the potential for improving and for interfering with optimal documentation and patient
care, which reinforces the importance of thoughtful and careful EMR planning, implementation,
and use.
Legibility: Handwritten notes could be illegible.
Potentially greater efficiency for clinicians who, under increasing time pressures and
facing large volumes of data, need ways to streamline their record keeping.[3]
Reviewing and documenting in the EMR can be done remotely.
Within an EMR, there is the capability to transfer important information about a
patient from one note to another, reducing the need to rewrite information that has
not changed.[3]
EMR templates save time by displaying information in a standard format and relieving
the clinician of reestablishing a format each time a similar note is needed.[8]
More efficient computer entry, “real-time,” i.e., during a patient encounter, could save
time and reduce the need to recall details about the patient visit at a later time,
potentially leading to greater accuracy.
Better system efficiency including data retrieval, remote access, and transfer of
information. Electronic access eliminates the cost and time needed to request and
locate the hard chart. It also diminishes the chance of lost records, physical space
required to store charts, and the need for personnel to assemble, store, and retrieve
paper records.[10]
2
With implementation and expansion of the EMR and EHR, patients either already have or soon will have greater
access to their own health information.
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EMR systems allow multiple providers to simultaneously enter data during a patient
encounter. This saves time tracking down and waiting to document in the hard chart.
The EMR is more readily searched than the hard chart, which often existed in multiple
volumes. The EMR is typically indexed by type of record, author, and date.
EMRs integrate different types of information that at one time were maintained in
separate paper files in the inpatient setting (e.g., clinician orders, nurses and other
ancillary staff documentation, prescription and medication administration records,
allergies, vital signs, laboratory and radiographic studies, problem lists, and
demographic information), into a single system and allow such information to be
imported into electronic clinical notes.
Real-time reminders and alerts can be incorporated into an EMR system including:
o reminders about health care maintenance (e.g., immunization timing),
o education (e.g., link to evidence-based guidelines), and
o error checks (e.g., alerts about allergies or potential drug interaction or incorrect
medication dosing).
Improved regulatory and security monitoring the EMR includes “meta-data” (such as
date and time stamps) and audit trail information that didn’t exist in the legal paper
record.[2]
Ease of quality improvement and research studies electronic data are more readily
accessible for quality improvement, public health, and research studies.
Potential challenges with current EMR implementation. The EMR theoretically promises to
improve efficiency and communication, reduce errors, and improve quality of care.[2] Yet,
every advance brings with it the potential for new problems, and the EMR is no exception.[3]
There are serious negative implications to poorly designed EMR systems, suboptimal EMR
implementation, or careless EMR use by clinicians. A poor quality medical record, which could
be inaccurate, inconsistent, incomplete, or obscure important information among unneeded or
redundant detail, may adversely impact current or future care, transfers of care, and/or
medico-legal investigations.[2] Problematic aspects of current EMRs include:
Increased work load: Data entry into the EMR can be time-consuming, particularly for
clinicians who do not type well.
3
Copy-paste: Electronically carrying forward or copying portions of previously written
notes and pasting them into a currently drafted note is problematic [2] when it is
either:
o Copying the work of others without attribution[3] (“clinical plagiarism”
[2] [11]) or
without independent confirmation.
4
3
Some clinicians rely on scribes or speech recognition software. Ultimately, the clinician is responsible for ensuring
that the medical record is accurate.
4
The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of the Attorney General have expressed
concern for fraud resulting from liberal copying-pasting within the EMR and subsequent upcoding, citing “possible
abuses including ‘cloning’ of medical records, where information about one patient is repeated in other records, to
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o Introducing unnecessary redundancy (see next point—“note-bloat.”).[2]
“Note-bloat”: Note bloat refers to unnecessary and redundant expansion of a note’s
length and complexity. With electronic documentation, it is easy to incorporate large
volumes of data into clinical documentation. Inappropriate copy-paste, carry-forward,
and computer-aided data entry (auto-filling) increases the risk of lengthy but
information-poor notes.[2]
Such redundant content detracts from readability, makes it
more difficult to interpret and identify pertinent content, and jeopardizes the
communication for which clinical notes are intended.[2]
“Boilerplate”: Despite the appeal of using templates, “boilerplate” text may add
unnecessary detail that detracts from more important information. Furthermore, busy
clinicians may carelessly retain parts of a normal review of systems or examination
from the template rather than correctly indicating abnormal reports or findings from
their interaction with the patient, resulting in inconsistent and erroneous information
within the medical record.
[2]
Differences between the electronic version and paper copy of the EMR: The printed
copy of the EMR may look very different from the electronic version. Specifically, the
paper copy of the EMR may differ from the electronic version either by including auto-
populated redundant or extraneous information or excluding data that could not be
readily printed. Currently, however, when copies of records are requested for patient
care, investigative, or discovery purposes; they are typically provided as paper copies,
often at a considerable cost to the requesting party, which may be difficult to read or
incompletely reflect patient care.
“Pseudo-history” and “pseudo-examination”:[3] Some EMRs convert checked
symptom boxes into sentences and paragraphs that are then imported into the EMR
such that they appear to recount the verbatim report of the patient. However, the
generated history is not derived from the patient’s actual words; it only represents
binary (YES/NO) data processed into standardized phrases. A similar process with
checkbox-to-sentence physical examination findings is available.[3] Such technology
potentially undermines consideration of each patient as an individual and conceals the
nuances of his/her unique history and needs.
Errors in the EMR can be perpetuated and difficult to correct: Some of these errors
have serious undesirable implications for subsequent care and patients’ health.
Providers and patients complain that when an error occurs in the EMR, it can be very
difficult to correct. These errors in documentation can be perpetuated over time and
may lead to actual medical errors and adverse patient outcomes.
inflate reimbursement In 2012, the Obama administration warned against such practice: “There are troubling
indications that some providers are using this technology to game the system, possibly to obtain payments to
which they are not entitled. False documentation of care is not just bad patient care; it is fraud.” (Abelson and
Creswell, 2012)
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Interference with provider-patient relationship: Real-time EMR entry during a patient
visit may interfere with face-to-face contact with the patient, which may reduce active
listening, conceal important diagnostic clues, and damage patient-clinician rapport.
Overemphasis on documentation to meet billing specifications: This issue largely
dates back to E&M regulatory efforts, initiated when paper medical records still
predominated. However, EMR systems have also incorporated E&M elements into
their electronic templates leading to concern that documentation whose major design
objective is to support coding and billing may subvert the true goal of the EMR, which is
to promote high-quality, safe, and integrated health care.
Acknowledgements
We appreciate the time and effort as well as the thoughtful comments of the following
reviewers:
Mr. Sam Benton
John Christiansen, JD
Kathy Ferris, ARM, CPHRM
Troy McGuire, MD
Sheryl Morelli, MD
Jeff Wright, MD
EMR Guideline Page 12 of 12
References
1. What Is an Electronic Medical Record (EMR)? Differences between Electronic Medical Records
and Electronic Health Records. HealthIT.gov. http://www.healthit.gov/providers-
professionals/electronic-medical-records-emr. Accessed 12/28/14.
2. Shoolin, J., et al., Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems consensus on
inpatient electronic health record documentation. Applied Clinical Informatics. 2013. 4(2): p.
293-303.
3. Bernat, J.L., Ethical and quality pitfalls in electronic health records. Neurology, 2013. 81(17): p.
1558.
4. Carroll, A.E., How health information technology is failing to achieve its full potential. JAMA
Pediatr, 2015. 169(3): p. 201-2.
5. Gillum, R.F., From papyrus to the electronic tablet: a brief history of the clinical medical record
with lessons for the digital age. American Journal of Medicine, 2013. 126(10): p. 853-7.
6. Weed, L.L., Medical records that guide and teach. New England Journal of Medicine, 1968.
278(12): p. 652-7.
7. Wright, A., et al., Bringing science to medicine: an interview with Larry Weed, inventor of the
problem-oriented medical record. J Am Med Inform Assoc, 2014. 21(6): p. 964-8.
8. Kuhn, T., et al., Clinical documentation in the 21st century: executive summary of a policy
position paper from the American College of Physicians. Annals of Internal Medicine.
2015;162(4):301-303.
9. Wachter, R., Why health care tech is still so bad, in New York Times: Sunday Review.
10. Harman, L.B., C.A. Flite, and K. Bond, Electronic health records: privacy, confidentiality, and
security. The Virtual Mentor, 2012. 14(9): p. 712-9.
11. Abelson, R. and J. Creswell, U.S. warning to hospitals on Medicare bill abuses. New York Times;
2012. September 24:B1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/business/us-warns-hospitals-
on-medicare-billing.html. Accessed 3/11/15.
