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Hedging their mets: the use of uncertainty terms in clinical documents and its potential implications when sharing the documents with patients.

TitleHedging their mets: the use of uncertainty terms in clinical documents and its potential implications when sharing the documents with patients.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2012
AuthorsHanauer, DA, Liu, Y, Mei, Q, Manion, FJ, Balis, UJ, Zheng, K
JournalAMIA Annu Symp Proc
Volume2012
Pagination321-30
Date Published2012
ISSN1942-597X
KeywordsElectronic Health Records, Humans, Language, Medical Records Systems, Computerized, Natural Language Processing, Patient Access to Records, Physicians
Abstract

In this study, we quantified the use of uncertainty expressions, referred to as 'hedge' phrases, among a corpus of 100,000 clinical documents retrieved from our institution's electronic health record system. The frequency of each hedge phrase appearing in the corpus was characterized across document types and clinical departments. We also used a natural language processing tool to identify clinical concepts that were spatially, and potentially semantically, associated with the hedge phrases identified. The objective was to delineate the prevalence of hedge phrase usage in clinical documentation which may have a profound impact on patient care and provider-patient communication, and may become a source of unintended consequences when such documents are made directly accessible to patients via patient portals.

Alternate JournalAMIA Annu Symp Proc
PubMed ID23304302
PubMed Central IDPMC3540426
Grant ListCA46592 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
HHSN276201000032C / / PHS HHS / United States
UL1RR024986 / RR / NCRR NIH HHS / United States
People: 
Frank Manion
David Hanauer
University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center at North Campus Research Complex
1600 Huron Parkway, Bldg 100, Rm 1004 
Mailing Address: 2800 Plymouth Rd, NCRC 100-1004
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2800 

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institutes of
Health under Award Number P30CA046592. The content is solely the responsibility
of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the
National Institutes of Health.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institutes of
Health under Award Number P30CA046592 by the use of the following Cancer Center
Shared Resource(s): Biostatistics, Analytics & Bioinformatics; Flow Cytometry;
Transgenic Animal Models; Tissue and Molecular Pathology; Structure & Drug
Screening; Cell & Tissue Imaging; Experimental Irradiation; Preclinical
Imaging & Computational Analysis; Health Communications; Immune Monitoring;
Pharmacokinetics)

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