The Electronic Medical Record Mess

emr

I am now using my third electronic medical record system.  There are tons of positives to it.   The negatives, however, are starting to build up more and more.   The reason?  I think it is due to the increasing mandates from administrators, governments and others who are not involved in the care of the patient.   They add more and more clicks which takes more and more time out of my life and from treating (or even looking at) the patient.  Anyway, the result is that you WORK for the EMR/EHR instead of the EMR/EHR working for you.  I am not alone in thinking this.  The Family Practice News has a section written by an residency director and a resident (both not in the real world) and jumped into the fray about EMRs.    They were initially pollyanna about it; that is until the readers have written back.  It has been great to see that other docs have the same concerns I have.  Please check out the articles here to feel that you are not alone.  I know they are not putting in 1% of the negative feedback they have received in order to give some hope.  Sorry, there isn’t any.  It is a mess.  I won’t edit any of your comments so share them here and let’er rip.