Comment Re:The biggest obstacle to this is doctors (Score 1) 233
I work at a hospital which has the objective of going paperless in the next decade; We've implemented many systems and are considered as early adopters in many of the different EMR systems.
I will say that although most healthcare professionals are resistant to change, we've forced these changes onto them. The result is that after the initial dissonance involved in changine the workflow, most adapt to the new systems and, at the worst, perform just as well as before the systems were adopted. At best, there are visible improvements, which are recognized as saving patient lives.
One example is that the number of negative drug interaction and allergic reactions had decreased; another is reduced amounts of improper dosages due to misread prescriptions; on computerized systems, these are trivial checks.
Regarding the poster's comments, I have to disagree that the obstacle is the added time in documentation, though that might be due to the system they are using; at my hospital, we have a transcription service for documentation; providers dial a phone number and make their notes over the phone, which are transcribed digitally (overseas where it's cheap to do so), which is double-checked by the provider before recorded into the patients' charts. This actually saves much more time than if notes were written by hand.
I think that the poster's issues stem more from their implementation of the available systems, or lack of knowledge of what's out there; I've seen successes and failures at my hospital. But where the failures occurred, it is because of improper implementation. A bit of due diligence on available technologies might be the answer to his/her issues.
I will say that although most healthcare professionals are resistant to change, we've forced these changes onto them. The result is that after the initial dissonance involved in changine the workflow, most adapt to the new systems and, at the worst, perform just as well as before the systems were adopted. At best, there are visible improvements, which are recognized as saving patient lives.
One example is that the number of negative drug interaction and allergic reactions had decreased; another is reduced amounts of improper dosages due to misread prescriptions; on computerized systems, these are trivial checks.
Regarding the poster's comments, I have to disagree that the obstacle is the added time in documentation, though that might be due to the system they are using; at my hospital, we have a transcription service for documentation; providers dial a phone number and make their notes over the phone, which are transcribed digitally (overseas where it's cheap to do so), which is double-checked by the provider before recorded into the patients' charts. This actually saves much more time than if notes were written by hand.
I think that the poster's issues stem more from their implementation of the available systems, or lack of knowledge of what's out there; I've seen successes and failures at my hospital. But where the failures occurred, it is because of improper implementation. A bit of due diligence on available technologies might be the answer to his/her issues.
