Patient wishes are tough to see in EHRs

Electronic health records are now ubiquitous in hospitals, and the systems give patients what could be a better way to communicate their wishes on treatment options at the end of life. But in too many cases, physicians using the systems struggle to find the documents. “Weirdly, there is not a handy or consistent place to put these things in an electronic health record,” said Marian Grant, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing who studies end-of-life care issues