STORIES & SOLUTIONS FOR THE MODERN BUSINESS USER

I have to admit that doctors often confuse me. Now I know, if you’re a regular reader of mine, you might think that’s odd because . . . I am a doctor. Yet still, sometimes my colleagues do things that I cannot explain. Because I focus on the cross section between technology and medicine, you can reasonably predict that I’m not going to be writing about why doctors choose a foreign car versus a domestic one. Nope, I want to deal with doctors and their habit of mouse clicking when no mouse click is needed.

A topic at the forefront of many hospitals we work with is how to address the ever-growing problem of physician burnout. There are certainly many factors, however a primary one is the dissatisfaction with the electronic health record (EHR) and extra time spent outside of patient care completing documentation.

Let me recap my previous blog post: I made the argument that the customer (aka EHR user) doesn’t always know what she wants, and it’s up to the IT analyst to provide for the users’ needs. I also posited that standardization and EHR vendor alignment is often a good thing, and that sophisticated healthcare systems across the country are pulling out perfectly good build to replace it with recommended configuration from the company that produces the software. Some IT folks are understandably uncomfortable with these changes because they now see themselves as “the heavy” and must tell end users that they can’t always get what they want.

You may have been taught that the customer is always right, but it’s been well-established that the customer is most certainly not always right (see my posts here and here). Plenty of successful, innovative business owners point out the fact that often, the customer has no clue:

“Double, double toil and trouble;

I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about curation recently. By curation I mean allowing experts to make decisions for those of us who are not experts. My first experience with curation happened four or five years ago. I walked into an optical store with my wife to look for some new frames. My vision is so poor that when I don’t have my prescription glasses on, I can’t really see much of anything at all. So, you can imagine how helpless I am when I take off my glasses to put on a pair of frames with no lenses. Sure, I can look at the mirror from an inch away and maybe have an opinion, but c’mon! That’s not very effective. Hence, I typically just put myself in the hands of my wife.

The KLAS Arch Collaborative recently generated survey data that showed a correlation between physicians who have extra training in their electronic health record (EHR) and user satisfaction. Sound like old news?

Becker's Healthcare caught up with Jason Anderson, senior manager of Avaap, who will speak during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference on "Why the Best CIOs May Be Missing the Biggest Revenue Opportunity," at 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.

Becker's Healthcare caught up with Craig Joseph, MD, CMO of Avaap, who will speak during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference on "Why the Best CIOs May Be Missing the Biggest Revenue Opportunity," at 1:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 19. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.

Innovation is all the rage. Everybody’s doing it. You better do it too . . . if you want to be cool! Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of innovation. Who isn’t? Wait; don’t answer that. I think I already know the answer. If your job no longer exists due to innovation, you may not be a big fan. Got it.