The EMR Audit Trail: Friend and Foe

In this first episode of Season 2, Dr. Pensa talks with attorney Saira Pasha, an EMR audit trail expert. What else besides the words in your chart does your electronic medical record track? Are 'secure messages' discoverable? (Spoiler: yes, they can be!) How can an audit trail help your case -- or hurt it? How does an audit trail expert 'read between the lines' of who's looking at what entries in the record, and when, and for how long?

Take home points: 

The EMR creates a trail that tracks not only your substantive words on the chart, but evidence of all the people who were in a given chart, at what time, looking at what, for how many seconds or minutes, what they did next in the chart, whether a template or smart phrase was deployed. It tracks and times views, edits, additions, deletions, changes, and any printing or searches. These are not part of the initial requested 'medical record,' but can be obtained through the request of an EMR audit trail. 

The timing of changes to the record can imply that charting was slanted in a way to be defensive or misleading (or at least, a plaintiff’s attorney is going to try to do that, even if your intention was well-meaning.)

Attorneys may infer the importance of a part of the record by seeing how many people were in a chart at a given time, and what they were all looking at, for how long. This information can act like a big red arrow pointing at a specific medication order or radiology result, for example, even if there is no explicit mention of it in anyone's notes. 

Secure messages, FYI's, Best Practice Advisories, and other prompts are all discoverable (with a little sleuthing) as part of an EMR audit within a few years of their appearance in the chart. 

If you cosign notes using a template that suggests you did a substantive review of another clinician's care (such as an APP or midwife), be mindful of the fact that the EMR tracks how long you spent in that note, or reviewing that patient's chart or imaging. 

Dr. Pensa references this 2021 case in which efforts to alter EMR records were exposed. 

More about Dr. Pensa and how to contact her can be found at doctorsandlitigation.com.