What to do when a company loses your run report?

G

goodemtdoes

Forum Ride Along
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Points
0
The company I work for supposedly "lost" my run report for a pt I had a while ago. Is it legal to document post-patient contact? What can an employee do to prevent this "loss" of documentation? I am so frustrated with the company. It seems to only lose reports that an emt might actually have to testify in court with. Thoughts? :glare:
 
Did you leave a copy at the ER? How about a copy for your Billing Dept or Clinical Review Dept?
 
Electronic or paper?
 
Just write up the run report again, and document why you are missing the ER and pt signatures
 
It's also worth typing up a run report on your home computer after a call that makes you say "hmm, I might get sued/called into court." Don't put the patient's name on it, but have enough identifying info (date of call, age, sex patient) so you can find it when you get called into court. This helps you review the call before having to testify, especially if the company has lost the real copy. The issue is mainly that it is hard to remember a call that long after.
 
This has happened to me before. Are they asking you to rewrite it? Is it possible to retrieve a copy left at the receiving hospital?

The thing is, PCRs are legal documents, and if they're asking you to rewrite it and represent the rewrite as though it's the original that is fraud. What you can do is rewrite another PCR, dated as of the current date, with whatever information on the call your dispatch center has in its records. In the narrative/comments section clearly indicated that this is a replacement record of the original date of service.

Don't fill in anything for vital signs, treatment rendered, or anything other than the demographic information provided by your dispatch records.
 
thegreypilgrim, thanks, that is good advice.

This PCR is a paper document, and I did leave a copy at the ER. The company is asking me to rewrite what I can remember, and so hopefully as long as I make it clear that it not the original document, it will be ok.. I am not sure if the company is asking me to re-write the pcr with completely legal motives, but I am going to try my best not to be a chump in this situation.

Besides the advice zmedic gave, about writing your own run reports at home, is there any other way an emt can prevent being in this position again? Besides electronic pcrs?
 
goodemtdoes said:
Besides the advice zmedic gave, about writing your own run reports at home, is there any other way an emt can prevent being in this position again? Besides electronic pcrs?
Click to expand...

Yes, there are ways.

But because these ways involve duplication, for example by laptop + portable scanner, or possibly a digital camera (even some small/cheap ones are good enough for document replication), these methods may be either illegal or unethical, or both.

Therefore, I'm not going to tell you what they are.

If you choose to employ one of those methods I didn't mention, it is on you to keep that information safe and secure and to use it ethically.
 
goodemtdoes said:
This PCR is a paper document, and I did leave a copy at the ER. The company is asking me to rewrite what I can remember, and so hopefully as long as I make it clear that it not the original document, it will be ok.. I am not sure if the company is asking me to re-write the pcr with completely legal motives, but I am going to try my best not to be a chump in this situation.
Click to expand...
Ask them why using the copy left in the ER is not an option. Why are they asking you to rewrite it? I can almost guarantee they don't have legitimate motives and are probably attempting to avoid having to explain to HHS that they lost confidential and identifying information on that patient.

DON'T rewrite "what you can remember". What you're authoring is a legal document every word of which you might have to attest to at some point. Don't write anything other than something like this:

This is a replacement record of care for the aforementioned patient on original date of service MM/DD/YYYY. Original record lost in billing process. Demographic information obtained from dispatch records. Cannot recall further details.

That's it. CROSS OUT the boxes/areas for vital signs, care rendered, all that stuff. You can document what facility the patient was transported to, but don't put down anything other than that.

Besides the advice zmedic gave, about writing your own run reports at home, is there any other way an emt can prevent being in this position again? Besides electronic pcrs?
Click to expand...
Work for a company that's more responsible/careful in its business practices. It's not your problem they lost the paperwork, just don't let them make it your problem by doing things like this.
 
I've actually had this happen to me before, during my internship. We rewrote the report to the best of our knowledge and noted in the narrative that the computer lost the original report and that all of the information in the rewrite was, to the best of our knowledge, the actual events that occurred. Regardless of what your bosses tell you to do, I would VERY strongly encourage you to note somewhere in your rewrite that the original was lost and that the second chart was ONLY to the best of your knowledge and subject to error due to however much time having passed between the time of the call and the time of the rewrite.
 
I would suggest using caution when rewriting a report at home, remember HIPA, your report will contain alot of confidential pt info, i'm not saying it's wrong just be careful.
 
wow. just wow

I wonder if any administrator would be so forgiving if a rank and file EMT lost a report.

If it were me, I would clearly indicate what you are writing was to replace the original, at the direction of your admininstrator.
 
You can always photocopy your run sheet before you turn it in, for calls you think you might have to deal with in the future. When I used to do this I would cover the top, which had all the HIPPA info, with a post it note or piece of paper and photocopy the rest. As long as you have the date on it you should be able to find the right run sheet if you need it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top