A nurse speaks out against bad EMR software
Every Thursday, the Chicago Tribune’s “Play” section runs a little feature called “Love/Hate.” The paper picks three or four things that readers love and three or four things that readers hate. This week, EMRs entered the picture. This appeared in the “I hate …” category:
… being a slave to computer programs to document my care as a nurse. It’s so ridiculously time-consuming.
— Sheila Young, Orland Park
That must be one terrible EMR—or perhaps a hodgepodge of disconnected legacy systems—if Young not only considers herself a slave to the computer programs, but feels compelled to share her disdain for the technology with a light-hearted feature section of the local newspaper. That’s quite a statement against the quality of the system design?
On further inspection, it could be a function of not wanting to change old habits. According to Illinois state records, the only Sheila Young from Orland Park who’s a registered nurse (indeed, the only Sheila Young in the whole state with an active RN license) was first licensed in 1967. That means she’s been in nursing practice for at least 44 years. Old habits die hard.
Ms. Young, if you happen to read this, please contact me. I’d love to get the whole story.
I found this blog to be interesting and would love to hear the full story as well! Communication and technology should work together to help healthcare sectors like nursing, administration, clinical, etc. On our website, we have a few pieces of content regarding this common issue experienced within different healthcare facilities throughout the world. Please click my name and take a look! Also, please let me know or update if and when you get the full story!
As a young, tech-savvy person bringing a love of all things computer-related into the nursing field; I can tell you that terrible EMRs are terrible EMRs– no matter what the age or experience level is. I have been counting, and it takes me at least an hour to complete my charting on our in-house EMR system. That is an hour I am not providing care or being a part of the team.
I am in the process of gathering evidence in order to convince somebody somewhere in my hospital that we need to just trash the whole thing and cough up the money to just buy a whole new system; perhaps one that the MDs would want to start using instead of having nurses act as secretaries for them.
Thank you for providing me a place to vent.
I must chime in with a “Hear, hear!” on this one, and I am far from being a technophobe (I actually remember when you HAD to use command line, and there were no such things as GUIs). In fact, I am an RN and I am so sick of bad EMRs in the hospital, that I have just finished the certificate program through the ONC to become a Clinical Consultant so I can hopefully work to phase out all the bad legacy systems and replace them with functional EMR systems that will make clinicians’ worklife easier, not more arduous.
Not even knowing Ms. Young’s story, I bet I can tell you some of the issues: being forced to double and triple chart because the duplicate fields don’t self-populate, barcode scanners that don’t scan or having to write a narrative to explain why you did or didn’t do something because the drop-down menus are inadequate. I could go on…
In response to Mike and Teri- It is hard to believe that so much time is wasted or spent on various activities other than caring for the patient(s). This is obviously a universal problem. Hospitals and other medical facilities should invest in new information and communication technologies to benefit both the patient and the nurse, physician, etc. People who seek medical services do not always have the time that is spent catering to poor systems. People, processes and systems need to work together to improve patient care and the inefficiencies within the healthcare industry overall.
The issues are the same as always, who is going to pay for the new EMR and how are you going to deal with all the data from the old EMR.
If you really want to change the EMR in a hospital environment you have to be able to address those 2 questions, because if you don’t the vultures.. .. er .. lawyers will descend, the EMR will stay and everyone but the lawyers will considerably poorer.
Its a two way street.
The vendors who crank out products where customer needs have not been researched are clearly at fault but so are the agencies who acquire software using ‘mindless’ scoring approaches or who buy on cost alone, all other things being complete unequal.
The simple question any agencies need to ask is do you want to change the way you work ‘because the systems needs you to do things a particular way’ or do you want to get your workflows working for you. After all, your agency spent years perfecting a particular way of running day-to-day operations that is your competitive advantage – an arbitrary change that causes you to lose that competitive advantage really is not a good move.
We’ve recently went “live” with the practice management portion of our electronic system. I must say the honeymoon is over. The interface is unappealing to look. It’s as if the developer did not apply one rule of interface development. It is also obvious that the programmer did not have the necessary skill set to ensure a smooth data workflow. I the industry needs to rethinks and upgrade its standards for Electronic Medical Records.
I am struggling with a new EMR. I have been a nurse 20+ years. I have kept up with technology and I can take any patient, any machine that comes through the door. I don’t hate change. What I do hate is being a slave to thousands of clicks on a computer to get my charting done; constantly checking for orders because Doctors put them in from anywhere never conferring with the nurse or seeing the patient………it sure would seem to me that EMR is DESIGNED to get and keep practitioner’s AWAY from the bedside, where they need to be! How does that improve the quality of healthcare? Who keeps saying and believing that it DOES improve it? The people who do not do it, that’s who.
Our non profit paid $145k to Accumedic Services, Inc. due to poor service and code we had $500k in revenue lost..
I’m a software developer with a B.S. in Computer Science and an obsession with good UI design. My father is a solo practice physician. When the government decided to ram EMR down his throat, he turned to me for help. I can say with complete disgust that after reviewing nearly every EMR out there today, they are ALL universally terrible. Moreover, they won’t improve because now doctor’s are forced to use them, removing any competitive incentive (for the time being) to make them better than their competitors.
If EMR software was good, doctors and hospitals would be buying it in droves without any regulations. It isn’t, and this is just a case of the federal government lining the pockets of the undeserving.