Lindsay Clancy Trial: A Master Class in the Importance of Documentation

This is much deeper than the saying “if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done.”

We are watching how ordinary pieces of the medical record is being picked apart years later. A psychiatrist speaking of conversations she remembers but did not document. A psychiatric NP asked about what Clancy reported but couldn’t tell us what was not reported.

Then fragmented care shows its ass with testimony of not having a complete picture of the care Clancy was receiving elsewhere but didn’t communicate with others involved in Clancy’s treatment.

Here we are years later watching an attorney try to reconstruct a clinical path from encounters, orders, assessments, messages, and notes.

Documentation is simply put, a longitudinal story. What you document, where it’s documented, what you don’t document, the specificity… all matters. It’s about preserving clinical reasoning and continuity.

The record has to be able to tell the story without you standing beside it to explain what you meant. Because years later you may not remember that encounter.