“When you see a physician, he’s got his head buried in his computer and he’s trying to document at the same time you’re giving him your history,” said Dr. Talk to a physician for more than 30 seconds about electronic health records, and you’re sure to hear a story about long evenings spent catching up on records, or just the tough demands of listening and typing simultaneously. “Outside office hours, physicians spend another one to two hours of personal time each night doing additional computer and other clerical work,” the study concluded. For every hour physicians provide direct face time with patients, they spend nearly two additional hours documenting the encounters, according to a study published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine. I’ll just keep it all in my head and eventually I will write my notes.”īut all that typing-either during or after a patient visit-can add up quickly. “But sometimes I will just put it on hold if I have a patient who needs me to sit down and talk with them, instead of staring at a computer screen. “I will try to talk while typing,” said Hong, after the patient left her Greenwood exam room. Some doctors say they are torn between giving patients 100 percent of their attention and trying to simultaneously listen to patients and enter data on a computer-far more data than they collected back in the days of writing a few relevant notes by hand in a patient’s paper files. And that has fueled a debate over whether all that effort is enhancing or compromising patient care. Some said the effort could transform health care, giving doctors and patients quick access to their medical information, and making better medical decisions.īut gathering all that information happens one click at a time, with a doctor or assistant hovering over a keyboard in thousands of exam rooms across the country. The goal was to build a national collection of patient information in a digital format that could be shared across different health care settings-from tiny clinics to huge medical centers. Department of Health and Human Services first required health care providers to begin collecting information electronically in return for financial incentives. It’s a tough balancing act, one doctors across the United States still are trying to master as electronic health records explode in use, six years after the U.S. Hong, a third-year resident at Community Health Network’s family clinic in Greenwood, listened and typed as the patient described her symptoms, medical history and medications. “Have you been taking anything for the congestion?” “Not anymore,” said the patient, a 74-year-old woman, between coughs. Ji Hong was trying her best to do two things at once: Quiz a patient about her cold symptoms, and type the information as quickly as possible into a computer.
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