Eloquent EMR and EHR Notes

Today I came across a tweet by the infamous @kevinmd that struck me. I think it really caught my attention, because I’ve been:
1. Reading a lot of complaints from people about the verbose EHR note
2. Seeing a lot of relatively new EHR software demo EHR notes that aren’t verbose at all.

Here’s the tweet:
@kevinmd – Kevin Pho, M.D.
The loss of eloquence in EMR notes is.gd/Tqf6Y3

The article linked at the end of that tweet is a pretty interesting read. The author compares the eloquence of a dictated note versus one from an EMR. It was an interesting read since the author was a self proclaimed lover of their EMR. However, they weren’t a big fan of the EMR notes (unlike the Happy EMR Doctor who had someone praise his EMR note).

What I’ve been seeing lately in the EMR world is a revolution around the quality of the EMR note. I’m not yet ready to declare the verbose, lengthy, unreadable EMR notes dead yet, but this revolution in quality, relevant note creation will get us there. I look forward to the day when I can post “Death of the Long, Unreadable EMR Note.”

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

4 Comments

  • The advanced EMRStick while it enables physician notes to be entered directly to the unit is not the best way to do it. The best way is for the physician to write his notes as he would normally then the transcriptionist takes the notes and transcribes them directly to the EMRStick rather than letting or having the physician have to do this. Thus time savwed and the physician does not have to force himself to bend to the requirements of the EMRStick – as it will take any and all of his notes in whatever form they may be.

  • The death of “the verbose, lengthy, unreadable EMR notes” will come with the death of the transcription business.

    That “money saving” move of firing your transcriber, that EHR vendors use as a selling point, is going to either stick, or docs will realize doing their own transcribing is ruining their golf/tennis game as it takes up way too much time.

    In a medical office there is $10/hr work and there is $200/hr work. The doc should focus on the $200/hr work and let someone else do the $10/hr work.

    For many, going to an EHR either reduces productivity as the EHR puts a larger work load on the doc OR the doc is able to sluff off much of the work to someone else…just like before having an EHR.

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