Amen. In my ER physician productivity dropped 30-40%. Those of us old school docs who can’t type, simply retired.
A good example: I challenge anyone to extract any useful information from a VA medical record. One page handwritten notes now consume 10 pages.
The whole objective of the EMR seems to be to satisfy the word counters who check to see if all of the government mandated “Elements” are checked off, to determine the level of service for billing.
It might even make some sense if they actually ever looked at the electronic records ... but they never do. They could just ask “are there any new medications you are taking” or something like that to update the list.
On the other hand, my doctor just scribbles down notes all over the patient folder ... sideways, upside down and has to go find the last entry (presumably his scribbles are dated). Thankfully I don’t see him very often. He hates electronic records but his ‘system’ if you want to call it that is chaotic.
Please see my post #41.
I was VA and just for the record a hard right wing conservative.
Yes, it is a Royal Pain in the Ass to enter all the information. We pharmacists had to do the same. However, the ability to recover a total medical picture of the patient is invaluable. It does save lives.
Where it saves lives is when we do not understand what is really going on with the patient. With electronic records we stand a much greater chance of figuring out what is wrong.