Effectively managing clinical infor

Effectively managing clinical information, such as laboratory or radiographic reports, medications, consultants' notes, progress notes, hospital records, and insurance information, is an essential part of all medical care and important in the diagnostic process.16 In an earlier study, failures to inform patients of clinically significant abnormal test results or to document that they had been informed occurred in 7% of tests.17 Although our study did not measure follow-up on clinical tests, respondents indicated that mismanagement of laboratory/radiographic reports occurred in 10.3% of encounters. Missing clinical information can affect patients' safety and quality of care.18 In another study, clinicians reported missing clinical information in 13.6% of visits.19 Our study had an even higher frequency (24.1%) of missing clinical information. This may be due to the inclusion of insurance information and progress notes in our study, which were not included in the earlier studies. The use of an electronic health record has the potential to decrease the incidence of missing clinical information