Is this legal?

[ettac]

I work in a small rural hospital. Our EHR is probably not the best. It forces a "default" physician name to be permanently entered and then the ER provider is required to change it before entering orders on each new ER patient. When the ER provider forgets to change it (this happens very often), it somehow became the job of the RNs to go through daily and "move" the orders to the correct provider. 
Is this even legal?  I feel it is very obviously the provider responsibility and that forcing the RNs to fix their orders is not legal. Basically the RNs are complying with orders under a fictitious default provider name..., and then in hindsight, they want us to "fix" their omission. 

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Surprized your quality dept doesn't force a "fix" for this issue. Liability issue for sure

[mdsRN2005, ASN, BSN, RN]

When I worked ER, our computer system had a similar problem.  There was an option to use “Physician, E.R.” (it was in the database as if it was a doctors name).  Our front desk staff used this when they entered the pt into the computer, and nurses could use it to key in protocol orders prior to an ER doc seeing the patient.  However once they opened the chart they had to assign themselves as physician.  If the nurse had already keyed in protocol orders, they had to sign off on them before they could add any new ones.  Maybe your IT department or software company could do something similar? I agree that your current workflow is a liability.

[HiddenAngels]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:17 PM, traumaRUs said:

Surprized your quality dept doesn't force a "fix" for this issue. Liability issue for sure

Yea I don’t like this, what if there’s an order that carries over from an order set that the patient doesn’t need or is contraindicated. Def not safe. I would speak up about it.