7 Best Practices to Combat EHR's Unintended Consequences in the ER

Two physician workgroups from the American College of Emergency Physicians have released seven best practices for emergency departments to overcome common pitfalls encountered with electronic health records.

Their recommendations are:

1. Appoint an emergency department "clinician champion."
2. Create a multidisciplinary EHR performance improvement group.
3. Establish an ongoing review process.
4. Attend to EHR-related patient safety concerns raised by the review process in a timely manner.
5. Disseminate lessons learned from performance improvement efforts publicly.
6. Ensure timely distribution by EHR vendors of product updates to all users.
7. Remove "hold harmless" and "learned intermediary" clauses from all vendor software contracts.

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