Trending issues in medicine 2015 – #3 EHRs

Spend some time talking with physicians.  It does not matter if they work in outpatient offices or hospitals.  It does not matter if they practice full-time or part-time.  It does not matter if they work in an academic center or a rural community.  They all will tell stories about the electronic health records. The idea behind electronic health records is pure.  But the implementation in 2015 is horrible. I highly recommend Wachter’s book – The Digital Doctor – if you want to understand the details of how we have arrived at such dysfunctional computer programs. My next trending issue will cover regulations, but I must address regulations as part of this rant. My personal experience with EHRs started in the early 80s at the Medical College of Virginia.  We actually liked our system.  It focused primarily on order writing and test retrieval.  We greatly decreased medication errors.  Our laboratory orders went directly to the lab, and thus were no longer lost in the chart. My next experience started in 1999 at the VA hospital.  The VA system was clearly developed with patient care as the first priority.  It evolves constantly, but has several major pluses.  First, the entire VA system is searchable from any one VA.  Thus, when a patient comes from another hospital, we can still retrieve records.  Second, very early we had access to films.  Being able to look at our patients’ X-rays added a convenient addition to patient care. I remember th...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs