Wasting Doctors’ Time
In a new study in Health Affairs it was found that physicians log “an average of 3.08 hours on office visits and 3.17 hours on desktop medicine each day”. So, to summarize, MORE time is spend on the damn EMR!! Now the authors of the study did make a bold prediction that there is “potential for physician burnout with EHR use.” Really? Ya think? I wasn’t sure whether this would be a candidate for the “Ridiculous Study of the Week” award or not as it definitely had potential.
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Why are we allowing our healthcare system to force doctors to practice medicine this way? And don’t think nurses don’t have to do the same thing. There is no proof that this hyper-documentation helps anyone. The quality metrics are bogus. The information is being sold to third parties or stolen. Doctors are miserable. Patients are unsatisfied. And yet…and yet..it continues. Why? Because it makes administrators happy. They get bonuses. They get gold stars. The hospitals brag about their data and the CEOs pat themselves on the back. Meanwhile the grunts in the trenches, doctors and nurses, continues to break down.
It is time for a change.
You didn’t mention the other big reason this is how medicine is now: risk management and lawyers.
If I’m late getting out of a shift, 98 times out of 100 it’s because of documentation NOT patient care…
And the nurses? Last week I checked to see whether the STEMI patient I was seeing had gotten the nitro I ordered…the answer was ‘Not yet, sorry I was documenting….’
Seriously? Has it really come to this? Even in a true emergent condition…..
More work + more debt => for less money + less time
What starry-eyed moonbeam student could resist?
At some point there will be a John Galt movement out of this system.
Retirement, and DPS – they’re both a version of Galt’s strike. It’s a tradition to quote the physician in Atlas Shrugged, Dr. Hendricks.
When the competent go on strike, they are replaced by the incompetent, who insist upon the titles, glories and adulation that they perceive the job once entitled to others, and now entitles them. They become grotesque puppets resembling their predecessors. Doctors of Nursing, Doctors of Oriental Medicine (aka acupuncturists), Doctors of Naprapathy (massage), prescribing Doctors of Pharmacy (RPh) – they all demand the debased term of Doctor, as though it means anything. Once it indicated a certain level of competence in the medical arts. Not now.