Recently, I went to see a doctor about an EHR. Dr. Greene (not his real name) is a typical solo primary care physician in a typical small town in the typical middle of nowhere. Four hours from the closest airport and miles and miles of winding roads, cow pastures and corn …
EHR and the solo primary care physician
I had a déjà vu experience recently when I visited a medical practice that was like so many others I’ve been to before.
This practice just wasn’t getting their investment back from their EHR.
The practice had been live on the EHR for about five months and was functioning effectively without pulling charts for patient visits. The clinical staff was comfortable with the …
Why the return on investment in an EHR is poor
When you go to see the doctor, how do they know (a) if you are due for any preventive health screenings like mammography or (b) if you have a chronic condition, if it is being monitored and managed?
And actually, not just if it is being monitored or managed, but are you able to achieve your life goals with good health? And what about …
How a patient support tool works to help patients and doctors
by John Rossheim
What’s the latest tool for recruiting the best clinicians to your hospital? Is it the professional pride of being associated with an organization that provides the best care in the region? Is it showing respect for the growing number of clinicians who seek to work hard but protect their personal lives from excessive intrusions in the form of frequent on-call duty or mandatory …
How your EHR can help with physician recruiting
Radiology has transformed into a core subject of medicine, since imaging procedures are getting more and more crucial to clinical decisions. Whether these developments, be it over-diagnosing or unnecessary radiation on the one hand or a more detailed and enhanced way of diagnostics on the other, are …
How Microsoft Kinect can help in radiology to view a CT or MRI
From Medicare/Medicaid incentives to EHR industry ads, it is hard to cut through the hype and determine if your practice is even ready to try to select and implement an EHR.
Implementing an EHR is a transformational exercise for any practice that requires redesigning every aspect of charting, clinical workflow and interaction with patients. However, in too many cases, practices approach EHR …
Supportive physicians and management to implement an EHR
iMedicalApps reviewed some recent news articles regarding business/enterprise adoption of the iPad as a legitimate alternative to Windows machines in the workplace, taking it as a sign that healthcare IT is poised to adopt it, too: “All in all, these developments bode well for the adoption of the iPhone and iPad as a mainstream, IT-blessed mobile healthcare solution.”
iPad …
What will prevent the iPad from dominating health care IT?
My current practice is getting ready to go live on Electronic Medical Records (EMR), but it’s taken us over a year to get here. When I first started this job, we were supposed to go live with EMR in two months. After I’d had a chance to speak with everyone, I just knew the timing wasn’t right for the EMR. We would need to be able to run, and at …
Signs that your practice is ready for EMR
I love experimenting with different ways to use technology within my pediatric practice. The iPad has been an amazing device to adapt and use with my families.
Here are 5 different ways I use the iPad with my patients at the point-of-care.
5 ways I use my iPad at pediatric point of care
Our colleague Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project has done much research about trends in mobile, particularly about health.
In contrast, Meeker focuses on overall big trends. She sees aspects I’ve never noticed, like what-all constitutes mobile: when I hear the term, I think handheld phones (iPhone, Droid, Blackberry), but she makes the case that mobile web access (and other wireless) is much more than phones.
As we …
How the mobile internet can transform healthcare
In February, IBM supercomputer Watson won Jeopardy! against its two human opponents, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
Watson’s victory rests on its power in speech recognition and the ability to understand colloquial human language used in game shows like Jeopardy!. The most interesting development of this story is that after Watson’s celebrated win on national television, IBM will partner with Nuance Communications to explore how Watson could help with medical diagnosis …
Welcome our new (doctor) computer overlords
About 8 years ago or so, our practice decided to move from paper records to electronic records. The decision was helped along by the fact that we were literally running out of space for our paper charts. I had been looking at electronic medical records systems (EMRs) for years prior to this but could not justify the cost to my partners – apart from the “gee-whiz” factor – until we …
How to hire an IT director for your medical practice
The e-reader battles are clearly heating up, with the Apple iPad, the aggressive marketing of the Kindle
Joseph Kim of Mobile Health Computing argues that it certainly should be, but I think …
Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle, or the Nook for medical students
ADVERTISEMENT
When working in the hospital, I intentionally minimize the time I spend on my iPhone because I don’t want people to assume that I’m just checking Facebook or playing Angry Birds.
Even though medical apps and the vast depths of the internet are at my fingertips, it’s just too easy to appear distracted. This represents a subtle, yet meaningful, glimpse of just one reason why I eagerly await the continued evolution …
Evolution of tablet devices for the hospital
by Mark Hendrickson
One sport that really bothers me is Major League Baseball. Why? It seems as though the hard-headed people calling the shots, and games for that matter, would rather keep their pride than make the right call.
Instant replay is no secret. It isn’t a new, untested technology—its been around since the mid 50’s and every professional sports league uses it with game-changing results, except the …
Electronic medical records and usability affect implementation
A recent post in the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog noted that a study found electronic medical records don’t improve outpatient quality. The authors of the Archives of Internal Medicine article, Electronic Health Records and Clinical Decision Support Systems, correctly points out that we should be skeptical and “doubt [the] argument that the use of EHRs is a “magic bullet” for health care quality improvement, as some advocates imply.”
This …
Why this doctor loves electronic medical records
I exchange thoughts with healthcare IT people on a daily basis over at Twitter. So many of them seem perplexed at why we patients look at putting our medical records on the internet with trepidation.
Then along comes this video from Elizabeth Cohen at CNN. In a matter of minutes, she was able to pull up one of her CNN colleague’s medical records, his …
Health records need to be online to improve health and save money
by Chad Hyett
There’s a storm brewing around the regulation of medical apps. The FDA has been skirting the issue for too long and it’s having detrimental effects on the potential for such apps. Recent FDA hearings have revealed that the agency is watching the apps stores for potential alarms and that they are drafting guidance. Whatever that means.
The FDA needs to make a decision quickly if …
Should the FDA regulate medical apps?
In 2003 our practice had a rare opportunity to build EMR functionality into the floor plan of our new office. I thought I had the perfect design for the EMR-based exam room.
The spring-loaded, cantilevered arms used to hold monitors and keyboards in ICU rooms would be perfect. Fitting a touch screen monitor to a standard PC would allow the provider to work without a mouse. I could turn the screen …
Build EMR functionality into the exam room
by Ray Carlson
Two recent articles posted here at KevinMD.com regarding the inclusion of discussions about the cost of health care services between doctor and patient highlighted the growing emphasis on not only the quality of care but the cost of that care to the patient as well. The first article was written by Dr. Leslie Ramirez, who advocated for a more proactive stance by doctors regarding …
Online tools to help shop for the most affordable health care
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
