If you request a copy of your medical records, chances are it won't take long to find a mistake – a mistake that could cost you big time down the road.

Lana Moriarty, director of ONC's office of consumer eHealth, hears stories like this all too often. Speaking at the HIMSS15 Patient Engagement Symposium on April 12, Moriarty recounted a recent letter she received from the mother of a 15-year-old child that chronicled a familiar narrative.

The young girl suffered a serious spinal injury back in May 2013, which led to several surgeries and treatment from a variety of providers. In June, they discovered the child had a severe spinal fracture that could have caused complete paralysis if it wasn't caught. The mother, determined to learn why the fracture wasn't discovered earlier, was told her daughter's medical records contradicted her version of the events. So she asked to see them.

For a total of three hospitalizations, there was a whopping 1,000 printed pages of data, she wrote in the letter – and in seemingly no particular order.

"My daughter's records (were) riddled with errors," she wrote. "There were pages and pages of things that indicated I had been educated on topics that we were never educated on, conversations with the surgeon that were never documented."

And the most glaring issue? They visited another care provider after the child experienced swelling in her back and reported to the provider the 15-year-old also fell down the stairs. Come to find out, the PA never ordered X-rays after this report and later said he was never communicated to regarding the fall.

"When patients have information, they give us a second pair of eyes," said Moriarty. "They help us figure out where information may be incomplete or where it is just plain wrong."

And the chilling reality here? Most often, portions of medical records are just plain wrong. A staggering 85 percent to 90 percent of medical records contain errors, in fact, Moriarty said, citing a literature review on the topic. So patient engagement here proves absolutely crucial in catching these errors.

Of course, both provider and patient alike benefit when a patient is involved with correcting inaccurate data, said Moriarty, but this shouldn't be all on patients. It's time for the healthcare community to make some serious changes in this realm.

"While presently consumers have and will continue to shoulder the burden to make sure information is available when and where it's needed, it is unsustainable," Moriarty said.

She recounted a recent conversation with a patient safety advocate who hit the point home: "I didn't go to school for this, and it's a full-time job. I don't want you to fill in the gaps; I want you to fix the system."