How Copy and Paste in EHRs is Hurting Patient Care

The electronic health record (EHR) has solved the illegibility issue of handwritten notes, but the downside and unintended consequences have been of equal or greater importance. The cult of the EHR “copy and paste” (CP) club in hospital care makes defending a Medicare billing audit a daunting task should a physician be required to justify their level of professional billing codes. The much more important issue, however, is that patient care has suffered.CP progress notes tend to look nearly identical from one day to the next. It is not uncommon for the subjective portion of a progress note to remain unchanged for days—or in one case, two weeks. The plan of care notes also remain the same, even when the clinical condition of the patient has changed dramatically.