Judith Graham
When Liz Tidyman’s aged dad and mom moved throughout the nation to be nearer to their youngsters and grandchildren years in the past, they carried their medical information with them in a few brown cardboard folders tied with string.
Two days after their arrival, Tidyman’s father fell, which hadn’t occurred earlier than, and went to a hospital for an analysis.
In the ready room, Tidyman opened the folder. “Very soon I saw that there were pages and pages of notes that referred to a different person with the same name — a person whose medical conditions were much more complicated and numerous than my father’s,” she mentioned.
Tidyman pulled out sheets with mistaken info and made a psychological observe to all the time test information sooner or later. “That was a wake-up call,” she mentioned.
Older adults have trigger to watch out about what’s of their medical information. Although definitive knowledge aren’t out there, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology estimates that almost 1 in 10 individuals who entry information on-line find yourself requesting that they be corrected for quite a lot of causes.
In the worst-case situation, an incorrect prognosis, scan or lab end result could have been inserted right into a document, elevating the opportunity of inappropriate medical analysis or therapy. This, too, is one thing that Tidyman’s father encountered quickly after shifting from Massachusetts to Washington. (Her dad and mom have since handed away.)
When each his new main care doctor and heart specialist requested about kidney most cancers — a situation he didn’t have — Tidyman reviewed supplies from her father’s emergency room go to. There, she noticed that “renal cell carcinoma” (kidney most cancers) was listed as an alternative of “basal cell carcinoma” (pores and skin most cancers) — an sickness her father had talked about whereas describing his medical historical past.
“It was a transcription error; something we clearly had to fix,” Tidyman mentioned.
Omissions from medical information — allergy symptoms that aren’t famous, lab outcomes that aren’t recorded, drugs that aren’t listed — could be equally devastating.
Susan Sheridan found this almost 20 years in the past after her husband, Pat, had surgical procedure to take away a mass in his neck. A hospital pathology report recognized synovial cell sarcoma, a sort of most cancers, however in some way the report didn’t attain his neurosurgeon. Instead, the surgeon reassured the couple that the tumor was benign.
Six months later, when Pat returned to the hospital in misery, this error of omission was found. By then, Pat’s untreated most cancers had metastasized to his spinal canal. He died 2½ years later.
“I tell people, ‘Collect all your medical records, no matter what’ so you can ask all kinds of questions and be on the alert for errors,” mentioned Sheridan, director of affected person engagement with the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine.
In much less dire situations, a affected person’s identify, deal with, cellphone quantity or private contacts could also be incorrect, making it tough to succeed in somebody within the occasion of an emergency or inflicting a invoice to be despatched to the improper location. Or, your loved ones historical past is probably not conveyed precisely. Or, you might not have acquired a service recorded in your document — as an illustration, a stress check — and need to contest the invoice.
Dave deBronkart, a 68-year-old most cancers survivor and affected person activist, recounts errors he and his household have skilled. Once, he checked a radiology report via a Boston hospital’s affected person portal. It had his identify on it however recognized him as a 53-year-old girl.
In one other occasion, the information that accompanied deBronkart’s mom to a rehabilitation heart after a hip substitute incorrectly recognized her as having an underactive thyroid when the truth is she had an overactive thyroid. DeBronkart’s sisters, who requested to take a look at their mom’s chart, found the error and had it fastened on the spot, so she wouldn’t get probably dangerous drugs.
“It’s important for people to realize how easy it is for mistakes to get into the system and for nobody to know it. And that can cause downstream harm,” deBronkart mentioned.The regulation that ensures your proper to evaluation your medical document, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, affords some recourse: If you assume you’ve found an error in your medical document, you have got the fitting to ask for a correction. (For extra details about methods to get hold of your document, see my earlier column here.)
Start by asking your physician or hospital if they’ve a kind (both a paper or digital model) it is best to use to submit a recommended change.
A easy error reminiscent of a improper cellphone quantity could be corrected by drawing a skinny line via the fabric and writing a recommended change within the margins or making an digital observe. A extra difficult error reminiscent of incorrect description of your signs or a prognosis that you just’re contesting could require a quick assertion from you explaining what materials within the document is improper, why and the way it ought to be altered.
Physicians and hospitals are required to reply in writing inside 60 days, with the opportunity of a 30-day extension. (Some states set shorter deadlines.) But medical suppliers are usually not obligated to simply accept your request. If you obtain a rejection, you have got the fitting so as to add one other assertion contesting this resolution to your medical document. You can even file a criticism with the government office that oversees HIPAA or a state company that licenses physicians.
Devin O’Brien, senior counsel with The Doctors Company, the biggest physician-owned medical malpractice agency within the U.S., notes that rejections could be warranted when details or medical judgments are in query. An instance is likely to be a affected person who desires a health care provider’s notes about probably extreme opioid use eradicated from the document. “The patient may say I don’t have a problem, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but the physician may think the patient has an issue,” O’Brien mentioned.
Another instance is likely to be a affected person who desires a prognosis eradicated from a medical document, as a result of it’d compromise her skill to get insurance coverage protection. That wouldn’t be an appropriate cause for making a change, consultants mentioned.
For extra details about correcting errors in medical information, see this guide to getting and using your medical record from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, this explainer from affected person advocate Trisha Torrey, and these descriptions of your HIPAA rights from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the Center for Democracy & Technology.
We’re keen to listen to from readers about questions you’d like answered, issues you’ve been having along with your care and recommendation you want in coping with the well being care system. Visit khn.org/columnists to submit your requests or suggestions.
KHN’s protection associated to getting older and enhancing care of older adults is supported partly by The John A. Hartford Foundation.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nationwide well being coverage information service. It is an editorially impartial program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
