The problem of “copy and paste” in electronic records

As opposed to text that is copied and pasted or imported from another part of the electronic record, the average amount of manually entered information in a progress note is

a. 18%
b. 29%
c. 43%
d. 55%
e. 70 %

A study of 23,630 internal medicine progress notes written by 460 different hospitalists, residents, and medical students found that a mean of only 18% of the text was created by hand with 46% copied and pasted from previous note or somewhere else and 36% imported from another part of the record such as a medication list.

The analysis, done at the University of California San Francisco*, was possible because the Epic electronic medical record used there can provide the provenance of every character entered in a progress note.

Medical students had the highest percentage of manually entered text and wrote longest notes—averaging 7053 characters, but even the shortest notes, by hospitalists, averaged 5006 characters. For reference, this post contains 1189 characters.

Manual entry comprised 11.8% of resident notes with 51.4% of the remaining information copied and pasted and 36.8% imported.

Think about it. For all groups, less than one-fifth of every progress note they wrote was original material. For resident notes, it was closer to 10%.

The authors cautioned that their study was limited to a single service at a single institution, but I suspect the results would be fairly similar in many if not most hospitals.

*Location of the study corrected on 7/7/17.

Incidence of speech recognition errors in the emergency department

Speech recognition errors occurred in 71% of emergency department notes and 21.1% of notes with errors were judged as critical with potential implications for patient care says a recent study in the International Journal of Medical Informatics.

Investigators looked at a random sample of 100 dictated notes and found 128 errors or 1.3 errors per note.

More than half of the errors were ascribed to speaker mispronunciation. Although when I use speech recognition software, it sometimes does not accurately discern what I am clearly saying.

Other errors involved deleted and added words, nonsense, and homonyms.

An example of a nonsense error was "patient up been admitted for stable gait."

Some of the critical errors (with possible interpretations) were as follows:

Which is better—an electronic or a paper progress note?

It depends on whom you ask.

A new study says internal medicine house staff generally feel that the quality of progress notes is unchanged or better since the implementation of an electronic medical record, but the attendings feel that progress note quality is unchanged or worse.

Over 400 interns, residents, and attending internists at four university hospitals were surveyed. The paper appears online in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

Specifically, 50% of residents felt that the quality of notes was unchanged and 39% thought the quality was better or much better. Conversely, 39% of the attendings felt the note quality was unchanged, and another 39% felt that it was worse or much worse.

From the paper: Half of interns and residents rated their own progress notes as “very good” or “excellent.” A total of 44% percent of interns and 24% of residents rated their peers’ notes as “very good” or “excellent,” whereas only 15% of attending physicians rated housestaff notes as “very good” or “excellent.”

When the 9-item Physician Documentation Quality Instrument was used to evaluate notes, attending perceptions of housestaff notes were significantly lower than housestaff perceptions of their own notes, p < 0.001. One of the PDQI items asked for a rating of how succinct resident notes were. That feature was rated lowest by attendings and residents alike. I can think of a lot of words to describe electronic progress notes, but "succinct" isn't one of them.

In all, 16% of interns, 22% of residents, and 55% of attendings reported that copy forward [copy and paste] had a “somewhat negative” or “very negative” impact on critical thinking, p < 0.001. Auto population of fields in notes was judged similarly.

The authors felt that these differences could be explained because Attendings may expect notes to reflect synthesis and analysis, whereas trainees may be satisfied with the data gathering that an EHR facilitates. I agree.

Can all this be remedied?

Dr. Daniel Sexton, a Duke University internist, authored a three page guide [link is safe] on how to write effective progress notes. Here are just a few excerpts:

DO NOT TRANSCRIBE LAB DATA INTO THE PROGRESS NOTES UNLESS YOU INTEND TO COMMENT UPON IT. [All caps by Dr. Sexton]

It is often good and useful to explain your thinking in the chart.

Do not mindlessly repeat yourself in daily notes. [That goes for "copy and paste" too (my extension of this recommendation)]

LENGTH OF NOTES DOES NOT RELATE TO RELEVANCE OF NOTES. [All caps by Dr. Sexton]

I have written about the pitfalls of electronic medical records several times. In my blog's search field to your upper right, insert "electronic medical record" or "EMR" and click "Search This Blog" to see my other posts.

It's early in the academic year. Start writing better notes now. And please don't copy and paste.