Doctors use EHRs to do 'chart biopsies'

As the number of hospitals with electronic health record systems grows, a new study finds that inpatient physicians who receive patients from the emergency department have begun to do "chart biopsies" of electronic records to prepare for the handoffs. Although the study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) doesn't reach any conclusions about whether chart biopsies are an improvement over traditional handoff methods, it points outs that "chart biopsies appear to impact important clinical and organizational processes. Among these are the nature and quality of handoff interactions and the quality of care."