I recently returned to hospital-based cardiology because I missed patient contact and the camaraderie of colleagues. What I didn't miss was all the typing. Not a day goes by when I do not curse Epic, MEDITECH, Athenahealth, Cerner, and any and all electronic health record (EHR) platforms.
I remember how efficient my day used to be, when I could quickly dictate a note, spend more time with patients, and get home to my family. For those of us in hospital-based medicine, there is no help in sight, but help did come for my friends in office-based medicine in January 2021. However, despite changes in the Evaluation & Management (E/M) coding requirements, many doctors remain chained to their laptops typing the equivalent of War and Peace.
Reams of lab results, orders, and imaging reports are still lobbed into office notes when just a mention would suffice. This "note bloat" drives a large portion of physician burnout at a cost of hundreds of lives and $1.7 billion annually.
Some hire scribes to handle the documentation burden, but that's like prescribing a drug to treat the side effects of another. So who should be held accountable and who can help us?
Advice From Epic's CMO
I spoke with Sam Butler, MD, who has been Epic's chief medical officer (CMO) and a member of their informatics team for over 17 years.
