In his op-ed blog post, David Do, MD exposes the cold hard truth of EMR failure—their inherent un-usability.
He says, “I overheard nurses praising the pilot of a new technology with the promise of improving communication, safety, and saving on healthcare spending. The innovation: two-way texting. That’s one of the many indicators that hospitals are stuck the technological stone-age.”
Great point. It’s almost embarrassing that these common technologies are BIG NEWS in the healthcare world. You’d think an industry that’s in and of itself a cutting-edge phenomenon (saving lives by doing things that require tremendous education and skillful implementation) would use equally sophisticated tools outside of the operating room. But that’s not the common case. Dr. Do calls out the assumption that new technology will magically make EMR in healthcare automatically better. “In reality,” Do writes, “there’s good and bad technology, and there are good and bad EMRs.”
Sounds about right.