Kevin MD has continued blogging with a couple of more posts about medical malpractice concerns.

The first questions he raises is, “Do electronic medical records raise malpractice risk?” This sounded counterintuitive to me, but the article he links–”Will an EHR affect your malpractice risk?“–raises concerns I had not thought of.

One issue that Kevin himself quotes is the idea that new theoretical access to data will result in increased liability. As the Medical Economics article states,

Waldren says that when doctors get EHRs, “there’s an expectation that they have access to data outside the four walls of their practice.” They worry that if they have access to results, say, from a lab test that another doctor ordered, they could be held liable if they don’t integrate those results into their own EHRs, he says. Basch says this liability could even extend to an online request for advice from a colleague, if it includes a patient’s name.

Kevin MD doesn’t seem to think there is much positive to be gained as far as medmal worries are concerned. And an anonymous commenter spelled out a pretty scary scenario:

The physician has a limited amount of time that can be spent in the care of any one patient. The attorney has screened for a damaged, sympathetic client and has by comparison unlimited time to comb through medical records. The incredibly vast reams of data, most clinically meaningless, allow any tale to be spun for the jury.

I can’t imagine that we won’t see more electronic record-keeping in the future. However, this is worth keeping in mind when one hears criticisms of the entire health system for not already having completely switched over to EHR.

Kevin MD also linked the Surgeonsblog on videotaping surgery and its implications for medmal. He’s not very positive. Video allows for all sorts of groundless suspicions to be raised by someone looking for trouble carefully reviewing the video. Furthermore, being watched can actually obstruct the best practice on the part of the doctor simply due to the pressure. Not many perform as well when they feel they are under scrutiny. The entry is well worth reading.