Resources
Field notes on medical-record integrity
Practical, plain-language guidance for attorneys working with EMR audit trails — what to demand, how providers withhold it, and what the law requires.
Behind the Chart: Why the Medical Record Is Only the Surface
The medical chart is the storefront. The audit trail is the warehouse behind it.
See what sits behind the chartThe Most Famous Malpractice Cases Were Decided by Memory. Yours Doesn't Have To Be.
Libby Zion, Betsy Lehman, and RaDonda Vaught turned on what people could recall or what a machine had recorded. The difference tells you exactly what to request today.
ReadHow to Request EMR Audit Trails: Request Language That Gets the Log
A production request that just says 'the audit trail' gets whatever the defendant decides that means. Here are the elements of a request that gets the complete log — definitions, format, scope, and the meet-and-confer that holds it together.
ReadEMR Audit-Trail Objections: A Response Playbook for Plaintiff Attorneys
Audit-trail requests draw a predictable set of objections. Each has a response grounded in the regulatory reality that audit logging is a control the provider was already required to run. A playbook, objection by objection.
ReadWhat Each EMR Can Actually Produce: Audit-Trail Exports Across 7 Systems
'We can't produce that' means something different in every EMR. A system-by-system look at what the seven major EMRs actually log and export, so the request — and the follow-up — can name what exists.
ReadHow to Read an eClinicalWorks Audit Trail: A Plaintiff Attorney's Guide
An eClinicalWorks audit export tells you when entries were made, when notes were locked, and what changed afterward. Here is how to read it, what a partial export quietly omits, and the patterns worth a second look.
ReadEMR Forensics 101: What the Audit Trail Reveals That the Chart Doesn't
EMR forensics is the reconstruction of a medical record's true history from its own metadata — the audit trail, revision histories, and access logs underneath the chart. Here is what the discipline is, what it can establish, and how it changes discovery strategy.
ReadHow to Read an Epic Audit Trail: A Plaintiff Attorney's Guide
An Epic audit trail export lands on your desk as a dense spreadsheet: users, actions, timestamps, workstations. Here is what the columns mean, what a filtered export quietly leaves out, and the patterns worth a second look.
ReadSigns of Medical Record Alteration in EMR Metadata
Altered records rarely announce themselves — on the face of the chart, a rewritten note looks original and a late entry looks contemporaneous. These are the five metadata patterns that surface alteration, and the innocent explanations to rule out.
ReadAAJ 2026 in Chicago: Why It Matters for Medical-Negligence Attorneys
The American Association for Justice brings its 2026 Annual Convention to Chicago, July 24–28 — one of the year's largest gatherings of plaintiff trial lawyers, and a rare concentration of medical-negligence expertise. Here is how to get the most out of it, and the EMR-evidence question worth bringing with you.
ReadWhat the Audit Trail Reveals in GLP-1 Prescriber Negligence Cases
Ozempic litigation is dominated by the manufacturer MDL — but a quieter, under-litigated track targets the prescriber, where the EMR audit trail (not the drug label) decides informed-consent, screening, and good-faith-exam claims.
ReadHow common is misdiagnosis? What the data on diagnostic errors actually shows
Diagnostic error is the largest single source of serious harm in American medicine — an estimated 795,000 deaths or permanent disabilities a year, concentrated in a short list of conditions. Here is what the research shows, and where a missed diagnosis leaves its trail.
ReadAre medical errors the third leading cause of death? What the evidence actually shows
One widely cited 2016 study ranked medical error third among US causes of death, behind heart disease and cancer. The number is real; so is the debate around it. Here is what the evidence establishes — and what it does not.
ReadAudit trail vs. access log: what attorneys must demand in discovery
An access log tells you who looked at the chart. An audit trail tells you what they changed. Confusing the two is how altered records survive discovery.
ReadHow the Cures Act ended 'too burdensome' objections to audit trail production
Providers once argued audit trails were too hard to produce. Between HIPAA's audit-control requirement and the Cures Act's information-blocking rules, that objection no longer holds up.
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