Posted on 03/07/2009 1:46:13 PM PST by neverdem
FOR 20 years, I practiced pediatric medicine with a “paper chart.” I would sit with my young patients and their families, chart in my lap, making eye contact and listening to their stories. I could take patients’ histories in the order they wanted to tell them or as I wanted to ask. I could draw pictures of birthmarks, rashes or injuries. I loved how patients could participate in their own charts — illustrating their cognitive development as they went from showing me how they could draw a line at age 2 and a circle at 3 to proudly writing their names at 5.
Now that I’ve been using a computer to keep patient records — a practice that I once looked forward to — my participation with patients too often consists of keeping them away from the keyboard while I’m working, for fear they’ll push a button that implodes all that I have just documented.
We have all heard about the wonderful ways in which electronic medical records are supposed to transform our broken health care system — by eradicating illegible handwriting and enabling doctors to share patients’ records with one another more easily. The recently passed federal stimulus package provides doctors and hospitals with $17 billion worth of incentive payments to switch to electronic records. The benefits may be real, but we should not sacrifice too much for them.
The problem is not just with pediatrics. Doctors in every specialty struggle daily to figure out a way to keep the computer from interfering with what should be going on in the exam room — making that crucial connection between doctor and patient. I find myself apologizing often, as I stare at a series of questions and boxes to be clicked on the screen and try to adapt them to...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Khmer Rouge killed anyone wearing eye glasses.
is that true?
what was the reason?
Did you ever wonder why doctors never give out their email addresses? You would think that email would be an ideal, non-intrusive way of handing patient questions.
I’d tell this Dr. learn to adapt. My mom’s oncologist comes in with a laptop. He can access every test, scan and lab result right there and goes over it all with her—even shows her the scans. If she asks a question and he doesn’t know the answer, he punches a few keys and looks up the information. He sends orders for lab tests and scans on the spot and even knows when she has seen her other doctors. In this case the physician integrates the technology into his patient interaction very well.
Do you give away your time for free?
And Spyware.
“Keeping medical records on paper inhibits patient choice, which is exactly what the AMA wants.”
Keeping paper records is a problem for MOST businesses. Slows them down and makes work HARDER.
“My mom’s oncologist comes in with a laptop.”
That is a rare doctor.
Yes. They thought only intellectuals wore glasses, and thus should be exterminated. Speaking a foreign language was also a fatal defect. Google: Khmer.rouge eyeglasses
Maybe it could happen in America:
“The Khmer Rouge, organized by Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle in the 1960s, advocated a radical Communist revolution that would wipe out Western influences in Cambodia . . .
Skilled workers were also killed, in addition to anyone caught in possession of eyeglasses, a wristwatch, or any other modern technology.”
if you wore glasses you could read
if you could read you were educated
if you were educated you were a threat
if you were considered a threat they killed you.
The cheapest, and most economical records are brief, handwritten ones, kept on paper.
Computerization adds nothing to medicine and makes it much more expensive. Invariably the people pushing for it have ulterior motives (e.g., sell or work on computers) and are not practicing physicians.
The good thing about every physician keeping his own records is that it allows for more privacy, a key quality of good medicine.
The profession is being ruined by nonphysician know-it-alls who think they can take the opinion of a real, practicing doctor (the author of this piece) and trash it.
Suits and lawyers have this arrogance.
Never saw a patient, never did five seconds of medicine, but, expert in how physicians should do their jobs and keep their records.
The illness of the age is that professionals are not free to do what they are trained at and best at, because of the meddlesome know-it-all suits, lawyers, liberals, and government bureaucrats.
The way to fix medicine is to reinject FREEDOM, the MARKET and NO REGULATIONS.
And email is no place for confidential patient records and communications between doctors and patients.
It's just like putting your medical history on YouTube.
In fact, HIPPA came to be because some nit-wit psychiatrists thought they would be cool computerizers and posted their patients' records on line and got sued big time.
I'm not just speaking as a retired IT guy who 'sees every problem as a nail' here. My own GP, who has many years of experience but is a recent immigrant from India, makes routine use of a tablet PC in direct work with patients. It gives him instant recall of as much of details of a patient's history that would normally require trashing through reams of paper records - or, more likely, relying on his imperfect human memory to pull up critical details. He harbors no romantic illusions about paper being somehow more "personal" than using today's technology. He wishes all medical records were as computerized and standardized as records in every other industry have grown to be. For the last eight years I have done all my banking online. If banks can secure my privacy adequately for all this time, I have no fear whatever that putting my medical records online would "compromise my identity." Who in hell outside the medical community would be interested in the condition of my colon, anyway?
Mr Nostalgia Tripper, remember what dealing with the DMV used to be like? Getting your registration address changed used to take a day out of your life. Today it's a few clicks on the state website. Whenever I find myself in another specialist's office, scratching away on yet another paper history form, I'm back at the DMV of forty years ago. After all these years, am I accurately recalling exactly when I had chicken pox? How many slightly contradictory copies of the same information have possibly found their way into those walls of file folders behind every medical receptionist? That's where the life-threatening dangers lie, right there. Standardizing medical records and putting them online will save a lot of lives.
I think it just takes too long to type
As a computer softwar engineer I have noticed this phenomenon quite frequently
When working WITH someone I can spot menu options and know the keystrokes far in advance of the person typing. When I am the one typing, the opposite happens.
I think they need someone to transcribe - not do the computer input themsleves.
Wait until you can't get insurance or a job because of this information being out there.
It's not about colonoscopy.
Sometimes it's worth a little inconvenience to have privacy.Walter Mitty type individuals have always appealed to totalitarians with the: 'just a few keystrokes and we can access anything in the universe' appeal.
Maybe it's better not to be able to access personal information.
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