An article written at the University of Colorado news about the recent publication about surgeons and the electronic health record.
I am thankful for smart colleagues. Dr. Sarah Tevis, associate professor of surgical oncology and Dr. Jeniann Yi, assistant professor of vascular surgery and physician informaticist, who wrote a wonderful editorial in JAMA Surgery. Read the full editorial here, it’s a quick read.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/2822313
Seriously, read it, but if you want the TL;DR
- Surgeons spend hours practicing tying knots and honing skills.
- Surgeons work hard to perfect their use of robots and O.R. tech.
- Why have few surgeons participated in the design of EHR tools?
- EHR technology has the potential to transform surgery. It is time.
- Why aren’t YOUR surgeons at the informatics table?
There, now I’ve said it. Your turn.
I know it is too late now.
But don’t you think the EHR cart was put ahead of the horse?
When these EHR systems were being designed now over 2 decades ago—– is when the surgeons should have been at the informatics table along with internists, pediatricians, critical care clinicians….
Was there even an informatics table back then?
These systems were not designed by clinicians for clinicians and patients.
I appreciate your efforts and the IT and EHR teams at UCH, but modification of an existing system initially designed for different functions and outputs is much more difficult than system development/creation.
James, your points are well taken. We DID have a surgeon on the informatics team in 2011 for a few years on our early Epic journey. And we do have 2 now. And yet, had there been more of a surgeon presence, some things might be different now.
As for clinicians designing systems instead of adapting billing systems, sure. My take: Epic is the least bad of the systems out there. And there has been 25 years where a clinician-designed system could have arisen and been adopted. No such contender exists. Difficult to succeed in these conditions.