If you want to see how the machine of medicine can be changed, read Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff in the New England Journal of Medicine. Under the leadership of Dr. Melinda Ashton at Hawaii Pacific Health, getting rid of stupid stuff was initiated to improve the inefficiencies of health professionals at the ground level. This program sought nominations for EHR ... Continue Reading about Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff – How to Clean Clinical Workflows
Within Normal Limits
If you poke around old medical records you’ll find WNL written in parts of the physical exam. Neurological: WNL. It means within normal limits. It’s the pen and ink dotphrase used through most of paper record history by physicians to indicate that the organ or system under exam was unremarkable. One of medicine’s most versatile and open-ended acronyms, within ... Continue Reading about Within Normal Limits
Keyboarding Doctors: Would You Hire a Doctor Who Can’t Type?
In 2011 I wrote about typing as a critical physician skill. Things haven’t changed much. Voice recognition has improved but admittedly only works in certain contexts. Typing remains key. It’s the interface to the digital world. You can quibble about EHRs but the critical nature of keyboarding goes well beyond records and impacts how we connect to the world. As I ... Continue Reading about Keyboarding Doctors: Would You Hire a Doctor Who Can’t Type?
Why Doctors Would Hate The Best EHR in the World
If you got together the best user experience professionals in Silicon Valley and invested billions into the creation of The Best EHR in the World, doctors would still hate it. They would complain that The Best EHR in the World is destroying medicine and hurting patients. Long essays in the Sunday New York Times would wax nostalgic about the good old days before the ... Continue Reading about Why Doctors Would Hate The Best EHR in the World
Physician Notes: Access is Only as Good as the Notes Themselves
If you spend time nosing around medical charts you’ll find that the quality of physician notes vary as much as the doctors who creates them. Even as physicians we sometimes have difficulty understanding what’s happening or where a patient is headed in their care. An informed patient begins with clean information It got me thinking of OpenNotes. This is a tremendous ... Continue Reading about Physician Notes: Access is Only as Good as the Notes Themselves
Carbon Health – 6 Ways it is Reinventing Healthcare and Revolutionizing the Clinical Encounter
We’re excited to have Carbon Health as our featured sponsor this week. The ideas expressed, however, are shaped and written on my own. You don’t have to look far to find doctors and patients at odds with what happens in a clinic. Repeated questions, unfriendly EHRs and poor communication add up to a miserable experience for everyone. It seems way the information ... Continue Reading about Carbon Health – 6 Ways it is Reinventing Healthcare and Revolutionizing the Clinical Encounter