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 ...
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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 ...
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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 and narrow ties, the grainy black and white images a nostalgic reminder of Life Before High Def.
But the real treat is ...
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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 formally abandoned at MGH, legend has it, after a patient thought it was directed at her and took offense).
One of the residents reads off laboratory test results from the patient’s ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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, ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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