EMR may increase malpractice lawsuit risk

The rapid movement toward electronic health records (EHRs) may unwittingly raise physician risk for malpractice lawsuits and push liability insurers to raise their premiums, a new report suggests. EHRs may reduce the medical liability for certain errors, but it appears they "both create new forms of medical liability and expose existing liability issues in the healthcare environment that might otherwise remain unknown," says a white paper published by the AC Group, a Montgomery, Texas, health IT research and consulting firm. The paper calls on federal officials to slow the pace of the federal Meaningful Use incentive program to get medical practices and hospitals to use EHRs.