I will confess that I wish I could snap my fingers and could start using electronic medical records (EMR) for my private practice. I would be so nice to have all the records at my fingertips. I could make a quicker review of their chart, chart progress in visual way to show the client, keep track of billing and insurance referrals.
But what are your experiences in being the patient of a doc with EMR?
My family doc uses EMR. He does a fine job of entering data and putting aside the laptop to chat with me. He uses good eye contact.
But yesterday I had to take a child to another provider at another site. The doc spent most of the time looking at his screen and trying to get his voice recognition software to work right. He had to fix a couple of mistakes, he made comments into the machine.
On the plus side, I know exactly what my child’s record says because I heard the notes: “___ weighs ___ and blood pressure is _____. Patient is tolerating the medicine well and shows improvements in_____”
Then he would fix errors in the dictation.
I calculated that the 17 minutes of “face time” with the doctor included 5 minutes of exam, 3 minutes of discussion about treatment and the rest fiddling with the EMR.
Didn’t feel like the most productive use of time.
Your experiences? Anyone have that experience in the mental health world (vs. general medicine)?
Musings on Faith and Psychology 