Consequences of a Health System Not Knowing Which Patients Are Deceased

Neil S Wenger; Fernando Javier Sanz Vidorreta; Michael T Dudley; Anne M Walling; Michael Hogarth

doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6428

Consequences of a Health System Not Knowing Which Patients Are Deceased

JAMA Intern Med. 2024 Feb 1;184(2):213-214. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6428.

Authors

Neil S Wenger¹, Fernando Javier Sanz Vidorreta¹, Michael T Dudley², Anne M Walling^{1

3}, Michael Hogarth⁴

Affiliations

¹ UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, University of California, Los Angeles.
² UCLA Office of Health Informatics and Analytics, University of California, Los Angeles.
³ VA Greater Los Angeles Health System, Los Angeles, California.
⁴ Division of Biomedical Informatics, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego.

PMID: 38048124
PMCID: PMC10696508 (available on 2024-12-04)
DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6428

No abstract available

Plain language summary

This quality improvement study in a California health system investigates the proportion of active patients who were deceased but not noted as such in the electronic health record (EHR), as well as encounters after death.

MeSH terms

Electronic Health Records*
Government Programs
Humans
Medical Assistance
Patients*