Health technology

1,606 articles · Since 2004

Articles, page 60

Using the F-word when it comes to EHRs

November 14, 2012Nov 14, 20123

Not long ago, Secretary of Health and Human Services Sibelius and US Attorney General Holder issued a stern warning to healthcare providers who are using electronic health records (EHRs). The federal officers maintain there has been an alarming increase in the charges to Medicare in institutions where EHRs have been implemented, and they warn that those behaviors will be treated as “fraud,” an illegal gaming of the system to increase …

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Using the F-word when it comes to EHRs

The fine line between gaming the system and maximizing documentation

John Schumann, MD

November 12, 2012Nov 12, 20126

Does your doctor use a computer instead of a paper chart? Chances are that she does. The rate of adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) over the last three years has been very steep. The main driver of this is…

Does your doctor use a computer instead of a paper chart?

Chances are that she does. The rate of adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) over the last three years has been very steep.

The main driver of this is a government subsidy from a part of the 2009 Stimulus Act (called the HITECH Act) that incentivizes doctors and hospitals to make the conversion to electronic record-keeping.

The push has …

The EMR is trying to serve too many masters

Christopher Johnson, MD

November 12, 2012Nov 12, 20122

The electronic medical record (EMR) is here to stay. Its adoption was initially slow, but over the past decade those hospitals that do not already have it are making plans for implementing it. On the whole this is a good thing because the EMR has the ability greatly to improve patient care. Physicians, as well as all other caregivers, no longer have to puzzle over too often barely legible handwritten …

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Make IT vendors your partner for a smooth EMR transition

Rosemarie Nelson

November 10, 2012Nov 10, 20125

Vendors talk about partnering with medical practices all the time – especially in the information technology (IT) world of electronic health records (EHRs) and practice management systems. But, ask any physician about their IT solution and most will express dissatisfaction,…

The reason? For the most part, medical groups are not trained effectively for integrating IT into their work flow.

Ask EHR vendors about their approach to training and …

Misinformation in electronic medical records has consequences

Anna Lembke, MD

November 6, 2012Nov 6, 20128

Electronic medical records have become an essential backdrop to modern medical practice. Paper charts, not long ago the mainstay of health-care documentation, have become antediluvian. Whereas once doctors used to write notes with pen and paper and insert the paper into a physical binder, doctors now keep track of patients by clicking keys on a keyboard and entering data into a computer software program.

One of the great advantages of the …

Stockholm syndrome and Epic’s takeover of medical records

Paul Levy

November 5, 2012Nov 5, 201214

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk…

Now, the health care connection. As a result of the billions of …

Stop penalizing doctors for effectively using EHRs

Margalit Gur-Arie

October 31, 2012Oct 31, 20129

The health care crowd is abuzz with the New York Times revelation that Medicare billing rates seem to have increased by billions of dollars in parallel with increased adoption of EHR technologies for both hospitals and ambulatory services. The culprit…

The health care crowd is abuzz with the New York Times revelation that Medicare billing rates seem to have increased by billions of dollars in parallel with increased adoption of EHR technologies for both hospitals and ambulatory services. The culprit for this unexpected increase is the measly E&M code.

Evaluation and Management (E&M) is the portion of a medical visit where the doctor listens to your description of …

Why venture capitalists shouldn’t try to solve health care

Margalit Gur-Arie

October 24, 2012Oct 24, 20128

I recently wrote a post about the clueless, but endearing, enthusiasm of technology people as applied to solving the health care problem. Dr. Davis Liu published a post describing the vision of Vinod Khosla, the famed venture capital maven, of…

I recently wrote a post about the clueless, but endearing, enthusiasm of technology people as applied to solving the health care problem.

Dr. Davis Liu published a post describing the vision of Vinod Khosla, the famed venture capital maven, of replacing doctors with machines. It turns out that Mr. Khosla wrote a series of three articles at the beginning of the year …

Digital medicine: Patients are stuck in the precarious middle

John Schumann, MD

October 15, 2012Oct 15, 2012

The use of computers in everyday medical practice has finally reached the tipping point. The HITECH Act, part of the 2009 federal stimulus bill, has been the final kick in the pants that U.S. health care has long needed to…

The use of computers in everyday medical practice has finally reached the tipping point.

The HITECH Act, part of the 2009 federal stimulus bill, has been the final kick in the pants that U.S. health care has long needed to make the conversion to digital. The act states that, by employing electronic health records (EHRs) in a fashion known as meaningful use, doctors are individually eligible for …

Don’t ever believe EHR uptake is slow only because it costs too much

Rosemarie Nelson

October 13, 2012Oct 13, 20127

The latest numbers from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics affirm that a majority of small practices do not have an EHR. Why is that? One big reason is because small practices don't have the management or technical infrastructure…

The latest numbers from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics affirm that a majority of small practices do not have an EHR. Why is that?

One big reason is because small practices don’t have the management or technical infrastructure available to prepare for and handle the biggest challenges facing medical practices today.

What are those challenges and what’s that got to do with EHR implementation? According to the Medical …

What EMRs are doing to our notes, and our brains

Robert Wachter, MD

October 11, 2012Oct 11, 20128

A colleague recently sent me a remarkable video – of Professor Lawrence Weed giving Medical Grand Rounds at Emory University in 1971. It’s fun to watch for many reasons: the packed audience composed mostly of white men in white jackets…

But the real treat is …

Should medical students learn how to use an EHR in medical school?

Ishani Ganguli, MD

October 4, 2012Oct 4, 20127

Outside a patient’s room in the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU), a senior doctor, a nurse, and several residents in various stages of wakefulness cluster for morning rounds. Each resident mans a computer-on-wheels (once called a C.O.W., the acronym was…

One of the residents reads off laboratory test results from the patient’s …

Health IT: We can fix health care, and we know exactly how to do it

Margalit Gur-Arie

September 27, 2012Sep 27, 20126

High tech people are very enthusiastic people. We are optimistic, confident and creative and if I may be allowed to say so, really, really smart. We start out by saying “Hello World!” not “Hi, I’m Jack or Jane”. We hail the entire Universe and assume it knows who we are, or that it will soon find out, because the sky is not the limit and we are going to change …

4 reasons why doctors need to drive health care technology

David Lee Scher, MD

September 25, 2012Sep 25, 2012

The physician’s role is drastically changing. More and more physicians are becoming institutional employees. More patient encounters are performed via non-physician providers. The increasing regulatory demands on physicians are consuming an inordinate amount of their time. Stress and burnout are universal to some degree. Both the financial and emotional rewards of practicing medicine have greatly diminished. They are becoming more quality control officers than healthcare providers. However, physicians will never …

How to destroy health IT innovation

Douglas Perednia, MD

September 21, 2012Sep 21, 20122

I have spent a good portion of his career working to come up with ways to make healthcare better, faster and cheaper through the appropriate use of computer and information technologies. Given the vitriol that I have periodically heaped upon many of the electronic medical record systems commonly deployed and mandated by the government, this enthusiasm for computers and telecommunications may come as a bit of a surprise to some …

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How to destroy health IT innovation

How can technology entrepreneurs disrupt health care?

Davis Liu, MD

September 17, 2012Sep 17, 201210

I recently viewed health care through the lenses of a technology entrepreneur by attending the Health Innovation Summit hosted by Rock Health in San Francisco. As a practicing primary care doctor, I was inspired to hear from Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, listen to Thomas Goetz, executive editor of Wired magazine, and Dr. Tom Lee, founder of One Medical Group as well as ePocrates.

Not surprising, the most fascinating person, …

Can digital medicine have a placebo effect?

Dike Drummond, MD

September 9, 2012Sep 9, 20122

Is the placebo effect something that demands the presence of a living human - or can we program it into a cell phone app? What happens to healthcare if we can? I must admit I have always been fascinated by…

Is the placebo effect something that demands the presence of a living human – or can we program it into a cell phone app? What happens to healthcare if we can?

I must admit I have always been fascinated by the concept of placebos. You give a research subject with a documented medical condition a sugar pill – and they get better. They heal themselves despite the fact they have not …

ACP: My EHR report card

American College of Physicians & Yul Ejnes, MD

September 6, 2012Sep 6, 20123

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Even though September is “back to school month” and students won’t get their report cards for a while, I have a report card to share with you now.…

A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.

Even though September is “back to school month” and students won’t get their report cards for a while, I have a report card to share with you now. In September 2006, my practice went “live” with an EHR, so I thought that the sixth anniversary of this event would be a good time for an assessment. For …

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ACP: My EHR report card

Striking the balance between the public good and patient privacy

Margalit Gur-Arie

September 6, 2012Sep 6, 20122

Everybody has a shadow. Although as a small child you may have tried, you cannot separate yourself from your shadow no matter what you do. Electronic medical records may be the first tiny step on the road to attaching yet another indivisible part to your persona, a “panoramic, high-definition, relatively comprehensive view of a patient that doctors can use to assess and manage disease”, and this, in the words of …

View medical apps with caution, just like any new medical device

Kenneth Lin, MD

September 4, 2012Sep 4, 2012

Doctors of my generation have experienced dramatic changes in the way we access the information we need to care for patients. As a medical student 15 years ago, my "peripheral brain" consisted of fat textbooks sitting on office bookshelves or…

Doctors of my generation have experienced dramatic changes in the way we access the information we need to care for patients. As a medical student 15 years ago, my “peripheral brain” consisted of fat textbooks sitting on office bookshelves or smaller, spiral-bound references stuffed into the bulging pockets of my lab coat. As a doctor-in-training, I replaced those bulky references with programs loaded onto PDAs. Today, smartphone apps allow health …

Health technology

Articles, page 60

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