Report: Many Younger People Have Found Errors in Their Medical Records

As reported last month in this publication, health record errors are a huge problem. Inaccurate healthcare information can affect everything from medication allergies to organ transplants. The vast majority of office-based healthcare providers now use electronic health record (EHR) systems -- nearly 80%.  

The potential for introducing errors into sloppily designed and poorly maintained systems is high. Many EHR platforms are outdated due to the expense of purchasing new software or updating existing systems. Security protocols are typically lax and depend more on administrative procedure than on programmatic safeguards. Supposedly more secure than paper records, EHRs are in fact riddled with vulnerabilities. One survey discovered that some 20% of patients are likely not correctly matched to their records. 

A new survey by Carta Healthcare of more than 1,000 patients finds that the younger generations are particularly attentive to inaccuracies in their EHRs -- and they often attempt to rectify them. Some 60% of Gen Z and some 52% of millennials who responded reported having had to correct their medical records at some point. 

“The good news is that the new generation is generally a lot more skeptical about technology, in part because we’ve had a greater percentage of our life being both wowed and disappointed at the same time. There's a lot more realism,” says Matt Hollingsworth, Carta’s co-founder and CEO. He also thinks that the growing number of people who work in healthcare -- nearly 11% in the United States in 2023 -- may account for the increased scrutiny. Many younger people are involved directly in healthcare related professions, including the design of EHR systems. 

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Conversely, only around 12% of baby boomers reported sending in a request to correct their records. Hollingsworth is concerned by the likelihood that they may be less attentive to potential errors -- and their downstream effects. 

“Elderly people are more in need of care,” he notes. Thus, they are likely to spend more time in the medical system and the likelihood of errors being introduced goes up accordingly. “You don’t want that happening to the elderly population,” he adds. “It's harder to recover from mistakes and the stakes are higher generally.” 

More than half of the total number of respondents across all age groups had requested copies of their records, and some 45% said that they had to correct the information in their records. Intriguingly, most respondents who tried to have their records corrected preferred to contact their healthcare providers by phone rather than in writing -- including Gen Z and millennials. 

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Around a third of the errors related to personal information. Nearly a quarter related to allergies and another quarter related to treatment history. Given that more than 60% of instances of patient harm may be due to record errors according to another study, these findings suggest some alarming trends in how healthcare records are managed. And even more errors may be lurking -- only 15% reviewed their records regularly according to the Carta survey. 

Nearly 55% of respondents aged 18–24 believed that the errors they detected had negatively impacted on their care. More than 40% of those aged 25–44 believed the same. Those in older age cohorts were less concerned. However, a substantial portion of all age cohorts did believe that errors could negatively affect their treatment and diagnosis. 

Most of the respondents believed that the inaccuracies were due to either miscommunication with their healthcare providers or due to human error in entering their information. 

“It’s so hard to document these things accurately,” Hollingsworth says. He cites the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED) used in medical documentation. SNOMED uses some 300,000 unique concepts, which ultimately total nearly a million if synonyms for those concepts are included. “Somewhere, there’s a million check boxes,” he notes ruefully.  

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He thinks that the systems themselves bear the brunt of the responsibility for the errors introduced. Indeed, interface difficulties have been cited as a major factor in the introduction of errors into EHRs -- and the diagnostic and care errors that then result. Poorly designed systems often place related fields near each other, increasing the chance that information will be mistakenly introduced into the wrong one.  

“Clinicians that care about their jobs work against [these challenges],” Hollingsworth says . “The system is not helping them do their job, but they fight it to the point where care gets delivered and it works out.” 

Despite the skepticism among some respondents, the survey indicates a relatively high level of trust in the accuracy of healthcare records. Some 86% believed their records were accurate. They would be well-served to take a harder look.