Death By A Thousand Clicks: Leading Boston Doctors Decry Electronic Medical Records

Channeling Lyndon Johnson on Walter Cronkite, in clinical medicine, when you ' ve lost Boston (including MGH), you ' ve probably lost the health IT war.Death By A Thousand Clicks: Leading Boston Doctors Decry Electronic Medical RecordsMay 12, 2017By Drs. John Levinson, Bruce H. Price and Vikas Sainihttp://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2017/05/12/boston-electronic-medical-recordIt happens every day, in exam rooms across the country, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago: Doctors and nurses turn away from their patients and focus their attention elsewhere — on their computer screens.By the time the doctor can finally turn back to her patient, she will have spent close to half of the appointment serving not the needs of her patient, but of the electronic medical record.I have observed this myself in my own personal experiences in recent years observing cliniciansin situ.  I (unfortunately) have also been on the receiving end of the resultant distractions, via a dead parent, at the very hospital where I did my residency training in pre-HIT days.Electronic medical records, or EMRs, were supposed to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health care, and provide instant access to vital patient information.Instead, EMRs have become the bane of doctors and nurses everywhere. They are the medical equivalent oftexting while driving, sucking the soul out of the practice of medicine while failing to improve care." Texting while driving " is, in fact, an excell...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: healthcare IT dissatisfaction Healthcare IT failure Massachusetts General Hospital MGH texting while driving Source Type: blogs