A new, hilarious data point: just found out today that the latest medical patient electronic intake forms my Dad’s group uses is hallucinating honorifics & titles. Apparently, you can pick your usual “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, “Ms.”, “Miss” or whatever, as well as certain ranks & titles, like “Officer”, “Sergeant”, “Colonel”, “Dr.”, “Prof.” etc.
…but it will occasionally decide to change the patient’s choice in that window. So you might have a 6 year old patient referred to as “Col. Johnny Smith” in their records.
This is apparently down to some recent changes that are (allegedly) resulting from AI-assisted coding.
This is problematic because;
1) there’s a BUNCH of laws that cover altering patient records (though most don’t apply to general clerical data)
2) if it’s altering honorifics in the intake forms, is anything else on those forms being randomly edited? Imagine the problems that could arise if the software is changing medication lists, allergies, or contact info? Consent to sharing data for consultation purposes? DNR orders? Contact information?
3) they also don’t know yet if the software is only doing this for new patients only, or if it’s accessing older intake forms. And if so, when? Constantly? Randomly? Only when someone accesses the patient’s records?