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America Braces For Daylight Saving Time - And Missing Medical Records (usatoday.com)
"One hundred years after Congress passed the first daylight saving legislation, more and more people are doubting the wisdom of changing the clocks," writes PBS, noting that it actually makes Americans use more electricity and consume more gasoline.
"If you can find anyone who supports this, they're probably just trolling you," writes Inc magazine's contributor editor, adding "Literally everyone hates it... It's almost impossible to find anyone who still supports this insane, anachronistic idea, which is leftover from a German coal conservation idea during World War I, and our heck-we'll-try-anything panic during the energy crisis of the 1970s." In fact, one study found that while consumer spending increases a bit at the start of daylight savings, it drops a full 3.5 percent in the wrong direction when it ends. (Which will happen tonight in most U.S. states at 2:00 a.m.)
And now USA Today points out that hospital software "still can't handle daylight saving time: Epic Systems, one of the most popular electronic health records software systems used by hospitals, can delete records or require cumbersome workarounds when clocks are set back for an hour -- prompting many hospitals to opt for paper records for part of the night shift. And it happens every year... Dr. Steven Stack, a past president of the American Medical Association, called the glitches "perplexing" and "unacceptable," considering that hospitals spend millions of dollars on these systems, and Apple and Google seem to have dealt with seasonal time changes long ago...
Carol Hawthorne-Johnson, an intensive care unit nurse in California, said her hospital doesn't shut down the Epic system during the fall time change. But she's come to expect that the vital signs she enters into the system from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday will be deleted when the clock falls back to 1 a.m. One hour's worth of electronic record-keeping "is gone," she said. Hospital staff have learned to deal with it by taking extra chart notes by hand... Many hospitals use Cerner, another major electronic medical records company. Those hospitals plan for Cerner to be down during the time change, too.
"If you can find anyone who supports this, they're probably just trolling you," writes Inc magazine's contributor editor, adding "Literally everyone hates it... It's almost impossible to find anyone who still supports this insane, anachronistic idea, which is leftover from a German coal conservation idea during World War I, and our heck-we'll-try-anything panic during the energy crisis of the 1970s." In fact, one study found that while consumer spending increases a bit at the start of daylight savings, it drops a full 3.5 percent in the wrong direction when it ends. (Which will happen tonight in most U.S. states at 2:00 a.m.)
And now USA Today points out that hospital software "still can't handle daylight saving time: Epic Systems, one of the most popular electronic health records software systems used by hospitals, can delete records or require cumbersome workarounds when clocks are set back for an hour -- prompting many hospitals to opt for paper records for part of the night shift. And it happens every year... Dr. Steven Stack, a past president of the American Medical Association, called the glitches "perplexing" and "unacceptable," considering that hospitals spend millions of dollars on these systems, and Apple and Google seem to have dealt with seasonal time changes long ago...
Carol Hawthorne-Johnson, an intensive care unit nurse in California, said her hospital doesn't shut down the Epic system during the fall time change. But she's come to expect that the vital signs she enters into the system from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday will be deleted when the clock falls back to 1 a.m. One hour's worth of electronic record-keeping "is gone," she said. Hospital staff have learned to deal with it by taking extra chart notes by hand... Many hospitals use Cerner, another major electronic medical records company. Those hospitals plan for Cerner to be down during the time change, too.
Ah... DST, the "every year we have something contentious to sell more ads on!" topic.
Just watch... if anyone gets CLOSE to *really* thinking about removing DST? There will be a tonne of pro-DST articles popping in. Why?
Cause more ads.
No one cares about this, at all. I've never heard anyone, ever, complain. Never.
I've heard people complain *after* reading an article, but only after the rise of ADS ADS ADS on the internet. And most people just ape crap in the article. They don't care personally.
And this? Some blather about what must be the crappiest piece of software ever? No one competent has a problem coding for system time, and their DB layer, unless they're the newest, greenest novice. About the only other people that get it consistently wrong are java bugs from Oracle -- repeatedly, because.. Oracle.
There is zero technical reason to care about DST. None. All the same problems happen if you change timezones when you move. You need to code for UT + timezone anyhow, unless you're incompetent.
Every year with this. Every year. Shut the hell up.
The problem with Leap seconds is that they are really, really problematic under unix. Unixtime literally doesn't have leap seconds. There are hacks and workarounds, but only that.
There are only two real solutions:
1. Get rid of the concept of leap seconds. The earth's rotation will slowly drift out of sync with astronomical time - but only with about a minute per century. Let someone deal with a leap hour in 6000 years time. Having all of society deal with astronomers who don't want to keep track of this on their own is just silly.
2. Redefine unixtime to include leapseconds. Change the POSIX standard and all other relevant standards to have unix run on TAI instead of UTC. Keep an /etc/leapseconds where all leapseconds are inserted. Let the system time conversion libraries deal with the conversions authoratatively.
And don't get me started on the hackish fugliness of leap second smearing. Ye gods is that an ugly hack.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Yeah, see, it's such a bad idea that even a /. headline doesn't get it right.
Also, go work for a company that starts work 1 hour sooner in the summertime. Somehow, Home Depot manages to change their hours twice a year, unrelated to the government calendar, and everybody gets by just fine.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Also consider the transportation of patients across time zones, which happens more often than DST changes. Same issue really, but it's possible to cross multiple zones by airplane. A dialogue of EDT/EST, CDT/CST, MDT/MST, or PDT/PST (in the US, for example) is then complicated in your manual entry scenario.
Easiest to record and display everything in UTC. Military uses Zulu time for the same reason.
The systems also need to handle leap seconds, and I doubt those are handled well; given this thread.