Researchers published their findings Dec. 4 in JAMA Internal Medicine. They looked at 11,698 seriously ill adult patients across UCLA health clinics for over two years or until November 2022, whichever was earlier. They compared patients who were reported as alive in EHRs to data in the California Department of Public Health Public Use Death File. Of the patients tracked, 2,290 were correctly listed as deceased, while another 676 who were actually deceased were listed as and believed to be alive by medical providers.
Of those, most had an encounter or appointment still pending in their records, and hundreds received letters about preventive care, unnecessary reminders about appointments and prescription refills, among other wasteful outreach, researchers found. In a news release on the findings, the UCLA-led research team said the gap is largely due to a state law limiting access to full death data only for the purposes of law enforcement or fraud prevention services.
“The amazing thing is that this is an easily solvable problem because the state has a database that can identify most of the patients who die, but current law prevents them from giving it to health care institutions; only financial institutions,” Neil Wenger, MD, lead author on the paper and a professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine, said in a release. “Perhaps highlighting this problem will raise awareness and help to fix this issue.”
Inappropriate outreach efforts may also be harmful to deceased patients’ families, Dr. Wenger told Bloomberg.
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