I work for a clinic and, as the IT guy, am responsible for the EMR.
Having done IT for over 20 years, I have to say that our EMR is one of the most poorly coded and backwards designed systems I’ve ever seen.
I could probably have the support of the providers to switch, but frankly, to be blunt, they all suck.
You also wouldn’t believe the amount of faxing that occurs behind the scenes. Since faxing is HIPAA-compliant, anytime anything is requested or sent, it’s faxed. Then it’s typically scanned into the EMR as a PDF.
The providers don’t look at the info (usually) because it takes too much time to wade through. The cost of people certified to extract the info off the faxes, decide what’s relevant, and code it into the EMR is prohibitive. Our great technological leap forward was to get scans directly into PDF’s, cutting out taking the paper faxes and scanning them manually.
If there’s any sort of data interchange standard, we’re not using it and neither are any of our data sources or data recipients. Heck, even real estate has better data interchange than medicine.
Basically, the vast majority of clinic operations outside of the exam room is butt-covering in case an attorney or the government come calling. The medical side gets done if we still have time.
And, sadly, we’re probably one of the more competent places.
Wow, that’s sad. Good to know even if depressing. Sounds like it is worse than I thought.
That sounds spot on and explains a recent handoff of medical info between two of my wife’s providers.
The HITECH Act has been a complete nightmare.
A guy who owns a software company told me that with this act , the government created captive buyers. The people selling the products only had to put minimal amount into R + D because their buyers had no choice.
I’ve been told that the group who lobbied for it were the data mining groups.
A study came out awhile back that said doctors used to spend 5% of their time on paper work, now 35%. Government makes medical care less efficient and expects prices to go down.
Hospital employees are not even taught how to use paper as an emergency backup!!!
Maximum FUBAR!
If you or loved one ever ends up in an ICU or CCU demand a print out the patient’s current meds every morning.