Anne Walling News Today

About 20 % of patients whose medical records showed them as being alive with a serious illness were in fact deceased according to California data, leading to hundreds of unnecessary interactions such as appointment reminders, prescription refills and other kinds of wasteful outreach that strain resources and healthcare workers' time.

<p>About 20% of patients whose medical records showed them as being alive were in fact deceased according to California data. The issue is that California law makes these full death data available only "for purposes of law enforcement or preventing fraud," which doesn't include most hospitals. This leads to a lot of wasteful outreach.</p>