electronic\u00a0health records<\/a>, a story whose basic outlines I\u2019d heard before, that electronic records are making things worse for small providers\u00a0who don\u2019t have the capital to upgrade their systems, and are, generally speaking, handicapping healthcare providers in general, who spend more time filling out the electronic forms than seeing patients, with endless checkboxes and fairly \u201cdumb\u201d systems which, as the linked article describes, require a physician to update a patient\u2019s smoker status at each visit, even for an 80 year-old.\u00a0 <\/p>\nI\u2019ve read similar complaints before, and claims that such forms worsen healthcare because doctors mindlessly check one checkbox after the next rather than being able to readily document what actually transpired at the visit.\u00a0 And, of course, I\u2019m sympathetic \u2014 but doctors lamenting their paperwork is nothing new.\u00a0 What I can readily believe is that the electronic systems are not entirely ready for primetime and the essentially-mandatory universal implementation is premature.\u00a0\u00a0 There are also clearly instances in which such records are valuable, especially when checklists of treatment expectations (e.g., for diabetes, for instance) are integrated into the recording process, and others where they\u2019re not particularly useful, such as the unique circumstances of an elderly patient\u00a0in which the particular social\/familial situation (e.g., wife caring for a patient with dementia)\u00a0is of more significance than any symptoms or treatments that can be identified with numerical labels (e.g., we can\u2019t quantify the degree of impairment with a numerical measure).\u00a0 <\/p>\n
What this reminds me of is the rush to implement iPads in the classroom or rather, not just in the classroom for particular learning exercises, but in a \u201ceveryone gets an iPad to take home\u201d approach.\u00a0 One of the Catholic high schools\u00a0sending us information this year (as my oldest is an\u00a08th grader\u00a0in a parochial school) boasts of its \u201cevery student gets an iPad\u201d program (which, considering that the school is fully supported by tuition, essentially means, \u201cevery\u00a0parent buys an iPad for their kid\u201d), and, so far as I can tell, the jury\u00a0is still out on whether iPads enhance learning, hinder it, or have no effect.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s true\u00a0that students\u00a0can watch video clips on an iPad, and bringing home an iPad is easier on the back than a backpack full of schoolbooks.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think I\u2019m entirely just a\u00a0Luddite when I say that I\u2019m doubtful that students can really\u00a0effectively read, understand, and take notes on textbooks in tablet form as well as a\u00a0physical book \u2014\u00a0and, more importantly, so far as I know, schools are implementing iPad programs not subsequent to well-researched\u00a0studies with control\u00a0groups, but in a race to see who can be out in front of the others.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And there was a report not long ago\u00a0of a local school which cancelled its iPad program\u00a0because they found out that the students were able to hack into it, get past the restrictions, and load it up with games \u2014 and because a large number of the iPads simply went missing.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every now and again, I take a look at the\u00a0\u201cLegal Insurrection\u201d blog by William Jacobson.\u00a0 Yesterday he linked to a Washington Post story on electronic\u00a0health records, a story whose basic outlines I\u2019d heard before, that electronic records are making things worse for small providers\u00a0who don\u2019t have the capital to upgrade their systems, and are, generally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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