When you go to the hospital, you have faith that you can rely on your medical records, right? That wasn’t the case for Stjepan Tot. Tot died of cancer and, as a lawsuit filed by his estate, wasn’t able to determine when his symptoms first appeared because “his medical records failed to accurately display his medical history on progress notes.” The estate is seeking $999 million in damages.
The defendant in this case? eClinicalWorks. If that name sounds familiar, they’re a company that handles health records that got slapped with a penalty several months ago.
The lawsuit against eClicnialWorks also says that millions of patients have compromised health records. Other complaints state that they fail to reliably record diagnostic imagine orders, don’t meet audit log or portability requirements, and that they don’t meet certification criteria.
The jury’s still out (bad pun intended) as to whether Tot’s estate will win the lawsuit or if it will actually cost eClinicalWords nearly a billion dollars, but it’s another black eye for the company used by 850,000 healthcare providers.