Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Blogs This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

A Doctors Story
Many years ago, three doctors formed an internal medicine practice and were proud of the thousands of patients they accumulated. They were fine physicians and very dedicated to the masses who walked through their clinic doors. They saw patients in the office, rounded at two hospitals, and visited a number of nursing homes. This was truly a full service practice.Around 2005, Dr. A was starting to fatigue. He was well into his sixties and did not like the direction medicine was going. The hours were too strenuous, the documentation requirements were getting increasingly complicated, and he saw the wr...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - January 6, 2017 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs

Problems Associated with EHRs: A Medical Malpractice Perspective
An attorney friend who defends physicians in medical malpractice cases has discussed with me the challenge of reconstructing a case for trial on the basis of the EHR print-outs she uses to prepare for a case. This theme was echoed in a recent article about how EHRs are shaping medical malpractice law (see:3 Ways Electronic Health Records Are Shaping Med Mal Cases). Below is an excerpt from it:Medical malpractice attorneys may be grateful that the rise of electronic health records means they no longer have to decipher physicians ’ notoriously illegible handwriting, but the records...
Source: Lab Soft News - January 4, 2017 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Medical Consumerism Medical Education Quality of Care Source Type: blogs

The Role of Machine Learning in Making EHRs Worth It
By LEONARD D’AVOLIO Recently, a great op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal called “Turn Off the Computer and Listen to the Patient” brought a critical healthcare issue to the forefront of the national discussion. The physician authors, Caleb Gardner, MD and John Levinson, MD, describe the frustrations physicians experience with poor design, federal incentives, and the “one-size-fits-all rules for medical practice” implemented in today’s electronic medical records (EMRs). From the start, the counter to any criticism of the EMR was that the collection of digital health data will finally make it possible...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Why Privacy Must Die
By ART CAPLAN I just finished my required training about the protection of patient privacy. Every employee of New York University Langone Medical Center must take an online course and pass an admittedly not very difficult quiz as to our duties regarding patient privacy. All other American medical centers have the same requirement. I passed my quiz. But, despite my certification, I think the effort to protect privacy in health care is a lost cause. It is time to admit that privacy in health care is dead. Confessing that privacy has passed on, while reporting a death is often very sad, has many benefits. Not on...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 19, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Legislated Out
I have a breathtakingly difficult confession to make. A confession, that on its face, seems rather innocuous, but in many ways shakes the foundations of who I always thought I was. How I identify myself.I no longer love being a physician.There, I said it. I winced even as I strung the words together to write the sentence. You see, to admit this is almost inconceivable. So much of who I was and who I have become is enmeshed in this intricate quilt of a profession. I view most every aspect of my life through this lens.How could I not? Wanting to be a doctor is the first cognition I can recall fr...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - December 18, 2016 Category: Primary Care Authors: Jordan Grumet Source Type: blogs

Keeping the human connection in medicine
Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a thoughtful essay by David Rosenthal and Abraham Verghese on the many changes in how doctors are trained and how they practice medicine. Efforts to improve efficiency and accuracy — including the introduction of electronic medical records — offer benefits, and pose some complicated problems. Doctors need to learn and do more, more than ever The health care system strives to deliver better care while keeping costs down. Advances in medical science and technology mean there is ever more information for a doctor to know, and policies to curb waste have limited the...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - December 12, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Sanford Limouze, MD Tags: Health Health care Managing your health care Source Type: blogs

A Different Kind of Meaningful Use Penalty
By HANS DUEVEFELT, MD Our clinic is worried about qualifying for this year’s Meaningful Use incentive payments. We have this hastily purchased EMR that was supposed to make life easier and quality better for all of us. The EMR vendor got paid a long time ago but we are still dealing with the administrative burdens imposed by our new system. By attesting that we can use this thing reasonably properly, we can receive some Government incentive monies, which even under the best of circumstances don’t even begin to make up for all the extra expenses and productivity losses we have incurred through going digital. What we are...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 8, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Does It Matter If You Get Along With Your Doctor?
By NATHAN MOORE, MD Seems like a silly question, right? No one ever asks if you get along with the cashier at the grocery store or the barista at your neighborhood coffee shop. For most folks choosing a doctor means finding someone in your area who’s taking new patients with your insurance, which usually isn’t too many. Simply getting an appointment is hard enough, so expecting a pleasant experience and a good relationship with the doctor seems to be an unreasonable request, like asking for a unicorn who also speaks fluent Spanish. Many people don’t think patient-physician relationship is particularly important...
Source: The Health Care Blog - December 7, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized communication Doctor-Patient primary care Source Type: blogs

The Use of Tablet Computers by Physicians for Data Entry into EHRs
There have been various conversations over the years about the use of tablet computers for data entry into EHRs by MDs (see, for example:Why Tablets Are The Future Of Electronic Medical Records;Tablet-Based Patient Registration Deployed at Longone Medical Center). This would seem to be a logical EHR capability given that one of the criticisms of these systems is that physicians spend too much time at the keyboard and not making eye-contact with patients (Doctors Need to Maintain Patient Eye Contact While Using EHRs). With a tablet, the physician can face the patient while entering data.&...
Source: Lab Soft News - November 30, 2016 Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Electronic Health Record (EHR) Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Pathology Informatics Source Type: blogs

21st Century Cures Update
When lawmakers head back to Washington, D.C. this week, one of the votes they have ahead of themselves is the 21st Century Cures bill, legislation that is intended to spur the development of new medical treatments. The bill was updated the Friday after Thanksgiving, leaving many of the provisions of previous versions intact, but also adding language intended to improve America’s mental health system and dedicates $1 billion over the course of two years to help combat the opioid epidemic. The updated package directs $4.8 billion in funding over a decade to the National Institutes of Health and includes $1.4 billi...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 28, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs

21st Century Cures Update - Includes Exemption for Education in Open Payments
When lawmakers head back to Washington, D.C. this week, one of the votes they have ahead of themselves is the 21st Century Cures bill, legislation that is intended to spur the development of new medical treatments. The bill was updated the Friday after Thanksgiving, leaving many of the provisions of previous versions intact, but also adding language intended to improve America’s mental health system and dedicates $1 billion over the course of two years to help combat the opioid epidemic. The updated package directs $4.8 billion in funding over a decade to the National Institutes of Health and includes $1.4 billi...
Source: Policy and Medicine - November 28, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs

OslerMD Rapid Vital Sign Measurement System for Home and Clinic
OslerMD is a new device from a San Diego, California company of the same name that was designed to provide a quick health checkup by simply placing four fingers on top of a few sensors. The device can be used in high traffic areas such as outpatient clinics, pharmacies, and schools, but also to be used at home by post-op patients and others needing a vigilant eye to watch over their vitals. One simply places their fingers over the four electrodes on the base of the OslerMD to have six vital signs recorded within thirty seconds. The device doesn’t have its own display, but instead relies on a tablet or smartphone to d...
Source: Medgadget - November 22, 2016 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Editors Tags: Diagnostics Emergency Medicine Exclusive Pediatrics Source Type: blogs

Prescription For Patient Safety With Health IT: More Time With the Patient, and Less Distraction
By TOM LANG, MD Recent government incentives have gone a long way toward bringing digitization to healthcare, with particular benefits seen in the PACS/ digital radiology areas and digitally archiving data for better access. A 2016 AMA survey (1) has shown that the biggest desires for physicians from digital health are increasing patient safety and improving work efficiency. I would like to propose that the most important aspects of patient safety are as follows: clinical workers (that is, doctors, nurses and other members of the caregiving team) need to maximize their time ‘at the bedside’ clinical worke...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 7, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Accessing & Using APIs from Major EMR Vendors – Some Data at Last!
By MATTHEW HOLT Today I’m happy to release some really unique data about a pressing problem–the ability of small tech vendors to access health data contained in the systems of the major EMR vendors. There’ll be much more discussion of this topic at the Health 2.0 Provider Symposium on Sunday, and much more in the Health 2.0 Fall Annual Conference as a whole. Information blocking, Siloed data. No real inter-operability. Standards that aren’t standards. In the last few years, the clamor about the problems accessing personal health data has grown as the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) increased ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 19, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Holt Tags: Health 2.0 Matthew Holt Tech THCB API CHCF EHR vendors EMR Survey Source Type: blogs