By Healthcare Facilities Today

Besides the importance of user happiness when using an electronic health record (EHR), using design principles that maximize user intuition and presentation of relevant information, patient safety should never be overlooked, according to a blog by Michael Chen, MD, on the Healthcare Blog website.

"Health care IT, in my opinion, is still in its infancy despite the number of years computers have been around and the existence of Meaningful Use legislation. As a practicing physician as well as a software coder, I’ve used a number of EHR’s (and still currently using a well known EHR by my employer of my part time job) to know how some of these appalling user interfaces affect not just workflow and user happiness, but patient safety," Chen wrote.

An example of one design element that most users may not be able to identify is the one that is most harmful when it comes to patient safety. In a well known EHR, you are presented a medication list for a patient. You assume that this list is a current medication list and is up to date.  However, the reality is that this EHR system automatically removes a medication from the list when it is determined to be expired even if it should be appearing on the current medication list, the blog said.

Unfortunately, the EHR programmers failed to understand that medications are not taken regularly by all patients all the time. Users don't assume this,s o why should an EHR make that assumption? 

"We are beginning to see studies that question the effectiveness of EHRs when it comes to healthcare cost reduction and patient safety. One should not make a general conclusion that all EHRs don’t help, are a waste of money, and have no place in health care. What gets lost in the translation is that an electronic health record system is not the same from one system to an another. Some do a better job than others," Chen wrote.

Read the blog.