Another EPIC Rant
The folks at EPIC pushed out another update. There was no warning. It just hit our computers, warranting a few reboots before we could start seeing patients again.
It became very clear the motto at EPIC is: “If it’s not broken… We’ll break it!”
We all tried to enter smoking history. Smoking history is important. Wait! They changed the system of entering the info into EPIC. In fact, it is almost impossible to enter the dates. The resulting info is incomprehensible. It takes five minutes of precious visit time to realize you can’t enter the info. The module is hopelessly broken.
Quick! Move on to something else! When did you have your last colonoscopy? 2021? Let me enter that in. Whoops! The EPIC module wants the precise date! Don’t you remember that date? Don’t worry! I’ll just make up the month and day!
Pause: Did you just say MAKE UP information to enter into the sacred medical record?
True…. it’s either do that or not enter it at all!
So, after complaints, the new upgrade “FIXED” the module. Now you can’t enter any info about colonoscopies at all.
“Don’t worry! We’re trying to push out a fix!”
I won’t hold my breath.
Didn’t have EPIC but EMR we did have did the same stuff. Updates always broke the system for a minimum of several days. They’d offer “training” on the updates which was only offered during office hours and they charged for it. Wonder how they think we got the money to pay their monthly fees?
“The government should have given 1 billion to 10 each giants to do a prototype”
or, better still, just stayed out of it altogether!
Curous to see that the VA in Spokane WA isn’t the only place that’s having grief with EMRs. And, in my own little city, there are at least three different brands of EMR that either don’t transfer data well, or not at all. Now I find there’s a dental oriented one that does not work well either. No wonder some politicians have such fancy houses in such fancy locations. Good luck to “us”, we need it.
Just to clarify: there is still no mandate to use EMRs. It’s very possible to run a successful practice with paper charts.
I was surprised that I could still BE surprised about the dehumanization of medicine by machine. My organization circulated a scary plan for patients’ records regarding what I call SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity.)
Each manifestation of a SOGI element will have its own ICD-10 code. For example, the diagnosis “male” could be, say, B99 and female B58. The subcategories of gender would not be gender variants, but rather manifestations. For example, “assigned male at birth” could be B99.1, and “male by legal status” B99.2 a whole pyramid of Gender Identity trails after. You will have useless definitions of SOGI stuff plastered into the chart, much of it reprehensible. GRAMPA- “generally recognized as male by public appearance” could be B99.7 Apply this to other ghastly identities and classifications e.g. Jewish public appearance and we have IT fascism.
The founder of Epic was Obama number one campaign donor. A few months after election, unready and non-communicative EMR were mandated.
She is now with 10 billion.
The money funneled took 10 years to make a partially workable product that finally may save as much time as it takes.
Just like the Microsoft monopoly it took 15 years of our money to get a usable product while they became rich.
The government should have given 1 billion to 10 each giants to do a prototype , physician friendly like opening a row of charts. Click and enter. The best prototype could have been picked, made perpetually forward and backwards compatible and a 10 year contract given a distributed free for a fraction of the cost. One national system that communicated. 10 years later. Repeat
I was computer literate since 1973, in medicine since 1978 and considered intelligent. Yet unlike my cell phone it took 20 unpaid hours to learn the system that don’t save time or make sense.