Compare this with the EHR that I use, which by the way, is rated one of the best and is extremely expensive to purchase, install, and maintain. The user interface is so busy and non-intuitive that to show it to a patient would be distracting and eye-numbing. The number of clicks, scrolling and entries needed to see even one piece of information makes it nearly impossible to use as education for a patient. In fact it is so time consuming and such a burden in the exam room that an entire new industry has sprung up to deal with the EHR called “scribes”. It an attempt to free up the beleaguered physician and restore patient-physician eye contact and connection, many doctors are paying for a thirdrd person to be there in the room just to record the visit notes and do the electronic paperwork.
My dentist was done charting by the time I left the exam room. I, on the other hand, face hours of after visit typing into my EHR, often long into the night. Even a simple ordering of an e-prescription requires about 6 clicks, entering diagnoses, proper ICD-10 codes, dealing with alerts that tell me that diagnosis does not qualify to be covered by Medicare, secure sign-ins and special authorizations needed for schedule 2 and 3 drugs, and on and on. That's just 1 function and 1 medication. Multiply that my thousands.
No doctor wants to go back to paper charts but we shouldn't accept the current stock of medical electronic health records.
The dental EHR was clearly developed for true dentist workflow and user satisfaction. The medical EHRs were developed for billing, coding and government requirements. I want what the dentists have. And I bet my patients do too.
This post originally appeared at Everything Health. Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, is an ACP Internist editorial board member who blogs at EverythingHealth, designed to address the rapid changes in science, medicine, health and healing in the 21st Century.
