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SFGate recently posted an article regarding physicians who had frustrations with the transition to electronic medical records (EMR). While some of the complaints seemed somewhat trivial and likely to decrease over time as physicians got used to the system, one complaint stuck a chord with me:
...patients also have complained about less eye contact during office visits because physicians turn away while typing on a keyboard.
I recently visited a specialist who, prior to meeting with me, had on of his medical students review my chart and ask questions about any changes there might had been. And the student did spend a significant amount of the time facing away from me while standing at the computer making adjustments. But the student was still verbally engaged. When the doctor came in for the actual consult, he made frequent eye contact and only directed the medical student to input data rather than inputting it himself. It worked, but obviously required that I be comfortable with there being more bodies in the room.
It raises questions about what the concrete changes to customary medical practice might be based on changes in technology. Are there any other steps that medical professionals can take to minimize the discomfort caused by changes in techology?
Related articles
- Achieving Patient Safety with EMRs (medcitynews.com)
- New Information on the Importance of EMR Portability Shared by Chhoda (prweb.com)
- Why Physicians Prefer to choose their own EMR software? (medcitynews.com)
Simply put, much is at stake for health care providers and there is little room for error. To meet the aggressive quality and cost metrics, IT infrastructures that are supported by clinical decision support applications and drive standardization of industry best practices must become a priority. Leveraging limited budget resources will depend on the way health care facilities use clinical decision support technology. That includes tailoring treatment plans for a specific patient and doctor through a combination of CDS tools -- including data-driven alerts, filtered referential information, order sets for specific diagnoses, care plans, surveillance technology and smart documentation forms. ...Deploying electronic medical records is a critical first step in the evolution of health IT...
From a thoughtful April article on health IT from Dr. Linda R. Peitzman, chief medical officer and executive vice president of clinical development and informatics at Wolters Kluwer Health. She also discusses a number of finer points about clinical efficacy that make this transition difficult in some ways.
Related articles
- Transformation of the healthcare delivery system (docpack.wordpress.com)
- Under pressure to adapt to the digital age, GE will invest $2B in healthcare software development (medcitynews.com)
[ted id=1077] In 2011, Lisa Gantsky was imagining "a future of business that's about sharing all kinds of stuff, either via smart and tech-enabled rental or, more boldly, peer-to-peer." In just two years, the innovations and changes in expectation from technology are fascinating.