July 27th, 2011 by Lucy Hornstein, M.D. in Humor, Opinion
No Comments »
Many people ask why the United States, unlike other countries, has no national system of electronic medical records.
Here’s why:
Insert the number 576 instead of 14, by the way. Each of which Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Musings of a Dinosaur*
July 25th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
No Comments »
Smartphones and tablets have reached 80% of physicians across all practice types, locations and years in practice, and 25% of users are “Super Mobile” physicians who use both types of mobile devices. This is far beyond the general population’s 50% adoption of smartphones and 5% adoption of tablets.
QuantiaMd, a free, online learning collaborative, released survey results that showed 44% of physicians who do not yet have a mobile device intend to buy one this year.
While younger physicians have higher adoption rates than older ones, current use of mobile devices by physicians longest in practice is above 60%, the survey showed. Among physicians with 30 years or more of practice, almost 20% already use a tablet device for work, and another 25% say they are extremely likely to do so. Physicians in their second decade of practice use Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
July 23rd, 2011 by Peggy Polaneczky, M.D. in Opinion
No Comments »
My practice has been using the EPIC electronic medical record for 5 years now, and it’s taken about that long for me to figure out how to tweak the system to make myself more efficient, and for the system to evolve to a place where I could tweak it myself.
Case in point – Quick Actions.
EPIC’s most recent upgrade includes little self-made macros called “quick actions” that turn repetitive tasks into a mouse click. I’m using quick actions to manage my results in basket in much the same way you may be using Rules in Outlook to manage your email.
Some of my macros are actually little work-arounds for a system that is not yet entirely integrated and a patient population that has not yet embraced online results communication. About half of my patients sign up for online results – I’m working hard on the rest…
Like many of you, I like a clean inbox, but need a place to park messages that are awaiting some future task for completion. I’ve decided to use the “results notes” inbasket for this purpose, so you’ll see some of my macros moving messages there.
I now have the following Quick Action options whenever I view a lab report – Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Blog That Ate Manhattan*
July 17th, 2011 by Edwin Leap, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
No Comments »
The old joke in medicine goes, ‘don’t get sick on July 1st.’ That’s because it’s the day when new resident physicians, freshly graduated from medical schools across the land, begin their training programs. Although they have spent four years in undergraduate school and four years in medical school, it’s residency where physicians are made from the raw material of knowledge-rich, experience poor high achievers.
However, even in residency physicians are seldom told the entire story of how the practice of medicine, and their lives, will look and feel as their careers evolve and they enter the medical work-force.
Since our profession changes from year to year and administration to administration, it seems a good time to mention some of the things upcoming young physicians will face. Sadly, these are things seldom mentioned by pre-med advisors or academic medical educators.
You see, physicians are struggling. Due to falling reimbursements and the ongoing federal mandate to see non-paying patients on call, it is increasingly difficult for physicians to cover costs like malpractice insurance, licensure, professional memberships and office overhead. (Well, if they want to have a house, family and food, that is.)
Many physicians are Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at edwinleap.com*
July 10th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
No Comments »
About 10% of computer-generated prescriptions included at least one error, of which a third had potential for harm, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
This errors rate matched that of handwritten prescriptions, deflating at least one reason for the federal government’s incentives to switch providers to e-prescribing. The government had provided incentives for switching to e-prescribing; those turned to penalties for not doing so on July 30.
Researchers conducted a retrospective cohort study of 3,850 e-prescriptions received by a commercial outpatient pharmacy chain across three states over four weeks in 2008. A panel reviewed them for medication errors, potential adverse drug events, and rate of prescribing errors by type and by prescribing system. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*