Unfortunately for the writer, the IP's of his submissions recorded in the Sitemeter IP audit trail for HC Renewal were of a health IT vendor, Meditech, as described in the post. Even after the post, the abuse continued. Only after I contacted the General Counsel of that organization did the abuses stop.
At Bob Wachter's blog "Wachter's World" I have been following a quite serious Sept. 2012 post entitled "Putting the “A” Back in SOAP Notes: Time to Tackle An Epic Problem". The post concerns the effects EHRs have on clinician cognition. Dr. Wachter thoughfully concludes:
... All in all, I am pleased that UCSF went with the Epic system and I remain a fan of electronic health records. And Larry Weed was right: we must have a structure to record what is happening to our patients, and his problem-oriented approach remains the most appealing one. (Ultimately, one wonders whether natural language processing will make such a structure less important, in the same way that I no longer pay much attention to filing documents on my Mac now that its search function is so powerful.)
But the time is now – before our trainees build habits that will be awfully hard to break – to recognize that electronic medical records do more than chronicle our patients’ histories, exams, and labs. They are also cognitive forcing functions, ever-so-subtly modifying our approach and language into something that can either improve our clinical care and teaching, or not. Let’s show these computers who’s boss, and put the “A” [clinician assessment - ed.] back in SOAP.
The post is followed by a largely thoughftul comment thread of dozens of comments.
A new comment has appeared as follows, from an anonymous user "EPIC" whose self-submitted URL is "epic.com":
Epic December 7, 2012 at 9:48 am #Physicians – thanks for your thoughts. However, we are not mind-readers and we can only work within the bounds of our archaic code. If you think you have it rough, you should hear what we hear from the nurses, you know, the underpaid ones that actually provide patient care and have to put up with your whining, bossiness, and superiority complexes. Anybody can memorize A&P. It takes common sense to use a computer. Perhaps time spent complaining could be more effectively be used in Epic ClinDoc training. Gotchya…
The problems of health IT are all due to whining, complaining, bossy, conceited physicians who just won't learn how to use the EHR properly...who, by the way, lack common sense and should just shut up and read the manual ... gotchya!
The response I've left requires no additional comment:
To whomever left the reply “Physicians – thanks for your thoughts” under the pseudonym “EPIC”… Your comment is, quite simply, perverse. It reflects an unfitness for you, if the comment is serious, to be involved in any aspect of healthcare.
Your comment might have been at least humorous if it referred to, say, IT issues in a nail parlor or pizza shop.
We are discussing, however, IT problems in patient care, that affect everyone, including the most ill of patients who expect the healthcare system to focus on their needs.
Further, you show a lack of understanding of what the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently made plain: the concept of “use error”:
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… The EUP (EHR usability protocol) emphasis should be on ensuring that necessary and sufficient usability validation and remediation has been conducted so that use error [3] is minimized.
[3] “Use error” is a term used very specifically to refer to user interface designs that will engender users to make errors of commission or omission. It is true that users do make errors, but many errors are due not to user error per se but due to designs that are flawed, e.g., poorly written messaging [or lack of messaging, e.g., no warnings of potentially dangerous actions - ed.], misuse of color-coding conventions, omission of information [or poorly presented information - ed.], etc.
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Take your perverse attitudes and ignorance elsewhere. Preferably far from your nearest healthcare facility.
Scot Silverstein, MD
Drexel University, Philadelphia
http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com
I am curious if the IP audit trail, if any, of Dr. Wachter's blog shows the IP of "Mr. Epic" and whether the IP shows the comment was truly coming from EPIC itself.
-- SS
