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Why Electronic Health Records Aren't More Usable (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: There are plenty of things wrong with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), writes Ken Terry. Among them: 'The records are hard to read because they're full of irrelevant boilerplates..., [a]lerts frequently fire for inconsequential reasons..., and EHRs from different vendors are not interoperable with each other.' But those are all just symptoms of the underlying (and unsurprising) problem: '[T]hey are designed to support billing more than patient care.' A recent study (login required) found that, of 41 EHR vendors that released public reports, fewer than half used an industry-standard user-centered design process. This despite a requirement by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT that developers perform usability tests as part of a certification process that makes their EHRs eligible for the government's EHR incentive program.
I am my no means an expert on EHR. However I have dated a couple of RN's and have several in the family.
What I can say is that who ever develops this crap does not seem to ask the Doctors or RN's how they do there job.
There was a different 15digit code for every procedure, option, action and the RN had to key each in for every step and often had to click a "yes that is right" box or have a Dr come over and acknowledge that yes that is the correct prescription, etc. Im not talking about new prescriptions, Im talking about standard daily doses given in a care facility.
In every case it took 3x longer for them to do the computer entry than it did for them to do the job and add written notes to the charts. Every RN I know complains that it is cumbersome, time consuming, and takes away from their time caring for the patients.
It really reminded me of some of the time keeping systems I have used. Ones where Accounting laid out the system so you had to enter the time code for each task in no smaller than 15min increments and you had to make sure every min of your day was accounted for.