Tag: "EMR"

“Searching thru an EMR is Like Playing the Game, Where’s Waldo?”

That’s how one doctor describes the typical search for relevant information in an electronic medical record (EMR). Whereas a prenatal (paper) chart may be six pages in length, the comparable electronic version can stretch on for 20 pages, full of checkboxes, indecipherable billing codes, irrelevant questions, etc.

What’s more, electronic records in many instances were designed with insurers’ needs in mind rather than other physicians.

Feb 19, 2010 | 5 comments | by

EMRs in Denmark

He clipped an electronic pulse reader to his finger. It logged his reading and sent it to his doctor. Mr. Danstrup can also look up his personal health record online. His prescriptions are paperless — his doctor enters them electronically, and any pharmacy in the country can pull them up. Any time he wants to get in touch with his primary care doctor, he sends an e-mail message.

All of this is possible because Mr. Danstrup lives in Denmark, a country that began embracing electronic health records and other health care information technology a decade ago.

Full article on digital care in Denmark.

Jan 18, 2010 | 4 comments | by

Solving the Problems of the Medically Underserved with Walk-in Clinics

If Barack Obama is serious about curtailing health care costs, promoting electronic medical records and electronic prescribing, and is increasing access to care, he could make a huge leap forward with a single decision: let Medicare cover the services of walk-in clinics and encourage states to do the same with Medicaid. In principle, these clinics could meet all kinds of needs of the medically underserved. A new study finds of 1,200 clinics nationwide, only 10% of walk-in clinics are in poor neighborhoods. That's because the clinics go where the money is. The solution: let Medicare and Medicaid pay the same market rates everyone else pays – rather than pre-determined government rates.

May 29, 2009 | 5 comments | by

Should Our Enthusiasm for EMRs Be Evidence-Based?

A 2005 study by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Ross Koppel surveyed doctors about a drug order system that the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania had installed. He found 22 circumstances in which the software boosted the probability of error. The system would make doctors scroll through up to 20 screens to get a patient medication list; other times it would put multiple names on the same screen, making it easy to mix up patients. (Penn has replaced the software.) Many current systems in other hospitals "continue to have the same problems with thoughtless, sloppy user interfaces," Koppel says, including endless false-alarm alerts for minor drug interactions.

May 13, 2009 | 2 comments | by

Modernizing the Health Care System

The FBI is on the trail of hackers who…… are now in possession of 8 million patients' records, as well as 35 million prescription records…… are threatening to disburse the sensitive data on the Internet if they don't receive a $10 million ransom.

May 08, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Life in the Trenches

If certain reformers have their way and electronic medical records are used to control treatment plans, physician actions, and payments, how will mistakes in the record be handled?

WhiteCoat's Call Room reports a case in which the hospital laboratory made an error in measuring a patient's potassium level. The value was so high, the physician ordered another test. The second test showed the potassium level was normal, but the lab report did not show that the test had been done to correct an improbably high value in the original test. The physician asked the lab to send the report from the first test along with the report for the second test in order to justify his order of a second test. The lab said it couldn't do this.

Read More » »

May 07, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Affording EMR Systems

This is from the Wall Street Journal:

The good news: "the software used to power the electronic medical-record system of the Veterans Health Administration" is available for free.

The bad news:

Mike Kappel, senior vice president of government and industry relations at McKesson, says once hospitals pay companies to deploy the VA software and the necessary service, training and upgrades it requires, the cost won't be much different than that of a commercial electronic medical- record system. Big vendors can work with hospitals to provide more reliable systems within their budget, he adds.

May 06, 2009 | 3 comments | by

Hits & Misses – 2009/5/1

Should couples be allowed to store embryos in order to use them to create new body parts or cure diseases?

What predicts orchiectomies? (Hat tip to Tyler Cowen at his blog.)

Will PIN numbers secure health records? Not necessarily. (Hat tip to Linda Gorman.)

Google health records of questionable use for treatment. (Another hat tip to Linda.)

May 01, 2009 | 6 comments | by

Patient at Risk in EMR System

Here is a case from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in which errors in an electronic medical record (EMR) led to an inaccurate diagnosis at an academic medical center in the US. It took three days for the patient’s care team to realize that the results entered into his EMR were for a biopsy they did not order of a lesion he did not have. Before the error was recognized, it had caused the patient “tremendous pain and mental anguish.”

At bottom, the error got as far as it did because of the “medical team” approach – no single person was responsible for this patient’s care. Each person relied on the (erroneous) electronic medical record for his view of the whole.

Read More » »

Apr 22, 2009 | 4 comments | by

Keeping Your Own Electronic Medical Record

Here are four sites to check out: Google Health; Microsoft HealthVault; RevolutionHealth; WebMD Personal Health Record. For the do-it-yourself EMR, here is some guidance.

The boring part:

Interested consumers will in many cases spend hours tracking down information from doctors, hospitals and labs, and then painstakingly entering the data into the electronic record themselves.

The potential benefits:

One Cleveland Clinic patient with hypertension, a long-distance truck driver, was able, from the road, to feed his doctor daily results from his blood pressure monitor. Based on that data, the doctor instructed the man to adjust his medications, and the driver was able to stabilize his blood pressure in a matter of days.

The potential dangers:

You must be vigilant about updating your files every time a medical event takes place…… "If your doctor is under the impression the records are up to date, but a prescription is missing or a surgery follow-up isn't listed….. it can be dangerous."

Apr 21, 2009 | 7 comments | by
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