Red Flags When Evaluating Medical Records
September 2005
When you have a suspicious record or handwritten entries, the following clues should alert you to the need for a document examiner and/or handwriting expert:
- Crowding or squeezing in of words.
- Writing words around existing entries.
- Change in slant, pressure, and uniformity of handwriting.
- Presence of erasure, eradication, or obliteration.
- Use of two or more inks to write one entry which normally would be written
with one pen/ink.
- Reaction of lines intersecting folds, holes, or paper tears.
- Improper sequence of intersecting ink lines.
- Shadow writing (impressions or lack of impressions/ink on next page.
- Alignment variation on margins.
- Use of medical forms not manufactured or printed until after the date of
entries.
- Use of later year, if it appears several times and has been corrected.
- Variation of folds, stains, and tears when comparing one page with
another.
- Unnatural order of writing and undue uniformity of margins, ink,
arrangement.
Jacqueline Joseph, B.A., CDE is a proficiency tested, board certified document examiner. As a practicing handwriting investigator since 1992, she is the owner of Accurate Document Examiners, a forensic science laboratory in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of numerous published papers and has given expert witness testimony in court, arbitrations and depositions. She welcomes your call. 1-800-698-8954 www.jjhandwriting.com.
See her Listing on Experts.com.
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