Electronic Health Records Unreliable to Use as Legal Evidence?

According to Medscape Medical News' Ken Terry, several experts says that electronic health records need to be verified before being admitted into evidence. Terry, reporting on a law review article in Ave Maria Law Review, writes that "the central contention of the authors, Barbara Drury, Reed Gelzer, MD, MPH, and Patricia Trites, MPA, is that EHRs are designed to maximize payments to providers and therefore do not necessarily reflect the care that was actually provided to patients." Without verification, electronic health records are hearsay, the authors said. One takeaway is that there should be an audit function in all EHRs and healthcare providers shouldn't be able to turn that function off or erase audit logs.