Because doing so would distribute the residents of the project all over town. Ask Memphis how well that worked out.

I agree, but I don't trust the state enough to give them that power.

Well written, and you even put your Latin in the accusative case.

Somewhat disturbingly, no. As a general rule, you can only sue the government if it lets you do so. If you get railroaded by a prosecutor, your only recourse in most instances is to convince the legislature to grant you a sum of money. The state doesn't even have to give you a cab ride into town from the prison.

I don't work for free. You want to increase my workload so your hospital can save money? Pay me.

Don't get me started on that subject.

That's improving delivery, not improving the drug. It's still an ugly hack of a drug - one that I'm glad we have, but an ugly hack. Pyridostigmine for myasthenia gravis falls in the same category. If you want to see a synaptic-effect drug that is a real advance, look at sugammadex for reversal of aminosteroid paralytics.

Well, no kidding. Isn't that the whole point of automation - making our jobs easier? What would be the state of the automotive industry if cars were slower than walking?

Look, you want to take potshots at doctors, feel free. God complex/prima donna? Yeah, sure, it happens. I've done it myself, though I'm not proud of it. But is lazy really the right word for people who spend seven to twelve years after college just laying the groundwork for a career?

It is beyond idiotic that physicians are expected to work as data entry clerks. Thirty years ago, a doctor could grab a couple of nurses on the floor and make rounds with them, dictating orders as they went. The nurses had the opportunity to ask questions about orders that seem strange right then and there, and the doctor could clarify them so that everyone knew what was going on. If a family member came by later in the day, the nurse already knew the doctor's reasoning for a treatment plan and could tell them without having to make a phone call requesting that I speak to Mr. So-and-So's brother. Even better, the nurses could save up all their less-important questions for that once-a-day interaction, saving everyone a lot of time. Now, the doctors are expected to enter all of those orders themselves, in a clunky system that takes upwards of a minute of dedicated time to enter a set of standing orders with no options changed from default. Multiply by sixty patients a day...

Well, the computer people are paid to do that sort of thing. I'm not. I mean, sure, if you want to pay me a consultant's fee, I'll sit down and really analyze my workflow and tell you what I think is going on, and how I think it could be improved, but I'm not a systems analyst, a programmer, or an IT guy, so there's no real reason to think that my input is particularly valuable in itself. Paying someone to follow me around and watch me work would make a lot more sense.

A hybrid system in which paper charts are scanned in at discharge and available for review in a computer system offer something like 95+% of the value of a full EMR from a clinician's point of view. Not necessarily from a data miner's, but since I get paid to be a clinician and don't get paid for the mined data, I don't have a lot of interest in increasing my own workload so the hospital can make more money. Especially as I'm not a hospital employee.

I would love an EMR that was as efficient as a paper record.

You're thinking of electronic typewriters, perhaps. Electromechanical typewriters include the Selectric and that Smith-Corona - the keys mechanically engage certain clutches and drive systems, which allows the motor to drive the hammer(s) for the appropriate key. The motor was always running.

Yeah, but Grafitti was pretty good and you could get away with using less screen real estate than modern on-screen keyboards if you implemented it. You'd need HP's permission, though.

I doubt many people here under the age of, oh, thirty or so have ever used a typewriter, let alone one that was capable of jamming. Selectrics didn't, daisy wheels didn't. The last one I used that could jam was my dad's mid-70s Smith-Corona portable.

You live in northern Europe, though, right? Where it basically never gets very hot or very cold, and the yearly mean temperature is such that the heat generated by a few humans going about their day is enough to keep it comfortable inside? Our summers are upper 30s Celsius nearly every day. It is not at all uncommon to go two or three months without the ambient temperature ever dropping below 20 C. In winter, typical daytime highs are low teens C with lows in low single digits, but with occasional drops to around -10 C. Typical power usage then is around 1/5 of peak summer load, although the gas usage for heating means that total utility bills are not much changed.

So you keep electric load low by using non-electric heating and living somewhere with a very mild, dry climate. That's a great solution, if you live somewhere with a mild, dry climate. I don't.

It's spring here, which means it's pollen season, so even if I wanted to take advantage of days with cool air outside I couldn't do so without turning every surface in the house yellow. My house is well-insulated, and it's painted white, and I use LED's as much as I can, but there's little I can do given that the climate here is basically "subtropical swamp".