EMR Tea Party, EMR Scribes, Older MDs, and MU+


This tweet is a little self serving since it links to my post on EMR and EHR about what I call the EMR Tea Party. Although, Charles Webster, MD’s response was too funny not to share. I haven’t seen any pitchforks or torches yet, and someone commented that Tea Party is a tainted term that shouldn’t be used, but I think there are some parallels.


EMR Scribes seem to be growing slowly in popularity. $10/hour does seem low for someone who needs to have some clinical understanding and more important clinical vocabulary. However, I imagine if the cost goes too high, then no doctor would ever get a scribe.


I think there’s definitely a gulf between those doctors that can type and those that can’t. Age is definitely correlated to typing speed. Although, I’m not sure I agree that tabets are the answer to this problem. One thing that is certain is that EMRs in their current form aren’t using an optimized UI for tablets. We’ll see if any EMR can bridge the tablet UI and make the case for touchscreen documentation by doctors. I’m skeptical that a nice tablet UI can replace type/text for most doctors.


This is a very interesting tweet from John Sharp. He’s right in many regards. There are plenty of elements of HITECH that don’t get enough exposure, but I’m not sure how many of those other HITECH elements really move the needle.

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.

1 Comment

  • I’m surprised docs haven’t risen up earlier…yet they are afraid the checks will stop. They have that balancing act of taking money from the Gov and not wanting to upset anyone for fear of the checks stopping.

    It is not that different from any “employee” group that decides to band together and form a union.

    EMR scribe…formerly known as a trasncriptionist. EHR sales folk love to use the idea of dropping your transcription server as a huge money saver. Problem is the doc becomes the transcriber…and most can’t type. I always tell a doc moving to an EHR to NOT fire their transcriber…few listen.

    A tablet, even with a slick tablet focused, EHR ain’t the answer, because a tablet is not an input device…it is an output device. Canned answers in your EHR is the only way a tablet could make this fast, and those aren’t allowed.

    Sure HITECH is about more than MU…but which other part of HITECH has $$$ associated with it??

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