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Why Improved Patient Care Isn’t “In The Chart”

Why do we physicians chart the way we do? Hopefully, we do it perfectly well and have no concerns at all. But where I practice emergency medicine, we are approaching maximum inefficiency in charting.

It all became much clearer when we started using our new EMR system. Let me make it clear, I’m not against EMR. In fact, typing and templates work better for me than dictating. My dictations were usually a mine field of blanks and misunderstood words.

Furthermore, if I wanted to use it, we have a new voice recognition dictation system in addition to our templated chart. Though admittedly, the voice recognition program clearly hates some of my partners, as evidenced by the way they grasp the screen and yell at it (‘Chest Pain, not west rain!’) and by its inexplicable use of profanity in the occasional chart.

But I digress. The problem as I see it is the evolution of the medical record. Why does the medical record exist? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*

Electronic Medical Records: What Is “Meaningful Use?”

Quiz:  What does the term “meaningful use” mean?

A.  Using something in a way that gives life purpose and leads to carefree days of glee.

B.  It depends on your definition of the word “term.”

C.  It’s not mean. It’s really nice.

D.  A large number of rules created by the government to assess a practice’s use of electronic medical records (EMRs) so that they can spur adoption, give criteria for incentive rewards, and have physicians in a place where care can be measured.

E.  Job security for those making money off of health IT.

The answer, of course, is D and E. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Distractible Mind*

Patient Tests, EHRs, And Medical Homes: The Price Isn’t Right

Healthcare reform is forcing medical students to learn about the financial costs of the tests they order, as well as their clinical importance. Once a taboo topic, it’s being openly taught to students to prepare them for practice.

At Harvard, one physician in training duplicated television’s “The Price is Right” to keep his peers guessing at the costs of tests on a patient’s bill. Molly Cooke, FACP, a Regent of the College, encourages doctors to consider the value of the tests they order as they deliver care. (Kaiser Health News, New England Journal of Medicine)

The price isn’t right for electronic medical records. Even $44,000 in stimulus money isn’t enough to make doctors jump into using computers. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*

A Not-So-Unforseen Complication of Electronic Health Records

[Here’s a] good article [from] the New York Times written by a doctor [Pauline Chen, M.D.] about intrusive aspects of electronic health records (EHRs) on doctor-patient communication. An excerpt:

“…just because EMR improves information sharing and retrieval, it doesn’t necessarily follow that our communication with patients and colleagues will also be better.”

Read the rest of the article here.

*This blog post was originally published at a few thoughts from a tumor surgeon*

Dr. Val Gives ABC News A Sneak Preview Of The Largest Health IT Convention Of The Year: HIMSS In Atlanta

This year, the Better Health team will be offering live coverage of healthcare’s largest tech conference: HIMSS in Atlanta, March 1-4. Three medical bloggers, Dr. Val Jones, Dr. Mike Sevilla, and Dr. Nick Genes will interview over 40 different exhibitors and stream their interviews live via UStream. You can ask questions of the interviewees by submitting questions to @drval during the event. Dr. Val Jones will report to ABC News, DC via Skype from the convention floor on Wednesday, March 3rd at 10:50am. Here’s a sneak preview of HIMSS:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v96kje6mCRU

Stay tuned to the Better Health blog for more information about HIMSS coverage… Or meet Dr. Val at HIMSS during her “Meet The Bloggers” panel discussion. Read more »

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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