That’s the question these JAMA article authors asked themselves, and they say – probably. The way they present it, it’s probably true – using the specific example of drug-drug interactions. If you put an anticoagulated elderly person on TMP-SMX and they come back a few days later bleeding with an INR of 7, you might be in trouble for clicking away the one important drug alert out of the one hundred you’re inundated on your shift. The authors note how poorly designed the alerts are, how few are relevant, and “alert fatigue” – but really, if you’re getting any kind of alerts or have any EHR tools available to you during your practice, each time you dismiss one, someone could turn it around against you.
The authors potential solutions are an “expert” drug-drug interaction list or legislative legal safe harbors.
“Clinical Decision Support and Malpractice Risk.”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21730245