It is rare to find any research topic ever published on why requests are made by patients who want to make changes to their medical record. I found one recently, and here to share with you what researchers discovered as the main reasons for making a request to change the medical record, and what types of information they wanted changed, and whether they result in modifications to the medical record.
In their qualitative research, the researchers studied content analysis of all patient-initiated amendment requests, an ‘amendment request’ defined as the process by which patients ask for changes to be made to their records, received over a 7-year period.
Readers can now view the infographic below (click on the infographic to view a larger image in a new tab of your current window) which shows a summary of all relevant findings from this research.
Also from this study, I deduced that when patients were given the opportunity to further participate in their care by allowing them to review their medical record, their medical record accuracy could lead to improvement after the identification and correction of errors or omissions.
I agree with the authors that doctors can make mistakes in the medical record, and that it is necessary to correct these mistakes at some point This is especially true when a patient discovers any mistake or omission upon reviewing his or her own medical record. However, it is uncommon when a patient will not want any information there anyway but such requests must be expected.
An ‘amendment request’ is a rare request as most patients, in the developing and under-developed world and even perhaps in the developed countries are unaware of the basic right to review their own medical record and the absence of any policy to grant patients the right to make an ‘amendment request’.
References:
- David A Hanauer, Rebecca Preib, Kai Zheng, Sung W Choi 2014, Patient-initiated electronic health record amendment requests, J Am Med Inform Assoc amiajnl-2013-002574 Published Online First: 26 May 2014 doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2013-002574, viewed 1 June 2014, <http://medicalresearch.com/author-interviews/electronic-medical-records-study-examines-patient-initiated-amendment-requests/5721/>
