Health IT Safe Practices. Toolkit for the Safe Use of Copy and Paste.

Partnership for Health IT Patient Safety. Plymouth Meeting, PA: ECRI; February 2016.

Electronic health records have potential to improve health care, but they may also introduceunanticipated risks. This report describes the results of a group convened to explore strategies to enhance health IT safety. Focusing on copying and pasting health data from one record to another as the first area of concern, the report recommends enabling systems to identify what data has been copied in the electronic health record and where it came from, providing training to ensure the safe use of copy and paste, and regularly track and assess copying and pasting practices. The report includes tools to related to the recommendations. A WebM&M commentary explores the hazards associated with the use of copy and paste.