SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for chromas
Mayo study finds Electronic Health Records less user-friendly than Excel
Using the System Usability Scale (SUS) in a major study published this week, Mayo researchers found modern Electronic Health Records (EHR) to be less user-friendly than Microsoft Excel. EHR got an SUS score of 45, which also ranks below GPS (maps), Amazon, and ATMs. At the top of the scale – Google search.
[...] The study showed that “SUS scores were associated with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and overall burnout; as SUS scores increased, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization scores decreased, as did the overall prevalence of burnout.”
It’s important to note that some specialties at higher risk for burnout rated their EHRs more favorably than those at lower risk for burnout. “This finding suggests that the relationship between EHR usability and burnout may not be due to more burned out physicians rating their EHR less favorably.”
In short, modern physician-perceived electronic health record (EHR) usability is lacking. There’s a lot of room for improvement in the way the United States electronic health records system handles data and allows data to be accessed and utilized.
Changes in Burnout and Satisfaction With Work-Life Integration in Physicians and the General US Working Population Between 2011 and 2017, Mayo Clinic Proceedings (DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2018.10.023)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday December 12 2019, @07:11PM
It's not meant for doctor's "convenience" at all, and it never has been. Many, if not most, physicians agree that they had it easier for themselves with paper records (conveniently ignoring all the behind-the-scenes it took to move all that paper around).
It is meant to prevent medical errors, i.e. doctor's mistakes. And sometimes it does pretty well at that, when someone bothers to do reconciliations with the allergy lists and cross-medication sensitivities and actually pay attention to what the system is telling them.
It is also meant to save the payors (including the government) money, through things like electronic claims submission. That it does. The physicians do not see any of the cash from that, though.
EHR does not help "the Government" to have access to everyone's health information. Yet. At present it is just as clunky as paper records for that purpose. (In fact, at present, if Medicare or any other government agency wants, say, the text of a physician visit, they get it mailed to them same as before. RAC audits are a different beast.) Instead, ICD-10 diagnosis coding is providing the payors with a much more finely-grained sense of the diagnoses behind a given procedure or DRG set, which will enable the payors in the future to nickel and dime the physicians and hospitals further. It'll save them lots of money. At the expense of giving the physician freedom on how to treat you specifically (instead of the averages of all patients with your condition).
But maybe next year or five they will start centralizing databases beyond what the manufacturers are doing for individual clients now.
This sig for rent.