The old doc in this story should hire one or more ARNPs or PAs.
She could still run the office and make the calls, but when she stumbled (which all do regardless of age) the ARNP or PA could pick it up.
It's not a fantasy; it is how my practice is, and I'm not as old as she is.
Truth is, there is just too much detail for any one person to know. We argue and so on about how to work something up, how to treat something. Two heads are better than one.
BTW the EMR thing is a racket. A good paper chart is better and more concise.
I can’t disagree that it is a racket (especially the cult-like weirdness of Epic if you have ever been out there to Wisconsin) but...in large, spread out organizations, it is far better than a paper chart, if implemented correctly (important). LOL, not for doctors, of course, I am completely sympathetic to their plight of being data-enterers!
Just think how many times charts would get misplaced, late, lost, and if someone had it...you didn’t! Never mind trying to read some of the stuff in those things. (I am grinning as I type this, remembering those days!)
Same with X-rays-do you remember those days of trying to find the paper jacket with all the xrays in them? And then, nobody ever put them back in appropriately, so when YOU needed to find that chest xray on a patient who had several dozen, your eyes would bulge as you grit your teeth! I remember one night, around midnight seeing a resident in a deserted hallway outside the film library, dump an entire thick xray folder out onto a stretcher parked there (probably for JUST these kinds of things!) and pawed through dozens and dozens of films until he found the one he wanted (as his hair was standing on end!) then he just shoved the entire mass back into the folder and threw it on the counter and ran away with the film!
LOL, don’t you miss THAT????