3 ms·

I've ranted elsewhere on this topic...but it's far, far worse than anybody realizes, and there is no incentive to make things better for patients. Every other f

I've ranted elsewhere on this topic...but it's far, far worse than anybody realizes, and there is no incentive to make things better for patients. Every other factor is literally stacked against them.

sachinag 11y ago
Yes. However! Government regulation could cut the knot. If HHS mandated standards for data at rest - since we never got a DICOM for charts like we did for images - the companies would have to write translates. When that happens, vendor lock in goes away and fewer people die.
- angersock 11y ago
  Mandating a single, simple standard for medical purposes would probably be the best thing that they could do. I just don't have a lot of faith in it ever happening.
hga 11y ago
Doctors, too. One sentence in the stimulus bill mandating "meaningful use" of these mandated systems ballooned into ~700 pages of regulations, and a bunch of consultancies to help keep doctors and hospitals out of trouble, according to a friend in the field. And there are many related stories about doctors focusing on their computers instead of their patients as they fight with these systems (I kinda saw that once, but in all fairness the doctor had lost all her paper records in a tornado, I don't think she had anything left but her appointment book). In one worse case I read about, fighting the system until there were enough lights turned green. In general this is a very hard field, e.g. the U.K. NHS more ambitious effort was an abject failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health
meatysnapper 11y ago
I know several doctors who have retired rather than deal with the EMR mess, and these are work 80 hours a week doctors, vs the new, gentler work regular hours kind. In addition, the doctors I know who continue to practice have had to reduce their patient hours due to the amount of time EMR takes up.

sachinag 11y ago

Yes. However! Government regulation could cut the knot. If HHS mandated standards for data at rest - since we never got a DICOM for charts like we did for images - the companies would have to write translates. When that happens, vendor lock in goes away and fewer people die.

angersock 11y ago
Mandating a single, simple standard for medical purposes would probably be the best thing that they could do. I just don't have a lot of faith in it ever happening.

hga 11y ago

Doctors, too. One sentence in the stimulus bill mandating "meaningful use" of these mandated systems ballooned into ~700 pages of regulations, and a bunch of consultancies to help keep doctors and hospitals out of trouble, according to a friend in the field. And there are many related stories about doctors focusing on their computers instead of their patients as they fight with these systems (I kinda saw that once, but in all fairness the doctor had lost all her paper records in a tornado, I don't think she had anything left but her appointment book). In one worse case I read about, fighting the system until there were enough lights turned green. In general this is a very hard field, e.g. the U.K. NHS more ambitious effort was an abject failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_Connecting_for_Health

meatysnapper 11y ago

I know several doctors who have retired rather than deal with the EMR mess, and these are work 80 hours a week doctors, vs the new, gentler work regular hours kind. In addition, the doctors I know who continue to practice have had to reduce their patient hours due to the amount of time EMR takes up.