Nice rant; I fully agree.
EMR and associated applications - MAR, charting, etc. - are about where commercial database software was in 1990: no clear winner, and evolving standards so system "a" can't talk to system "b" because the captured data is different.
I spent ah, many years in commercial software development; I'm a new RN; the bits of applications available to students where I did clinicals were quite primitive. On cannot even stop charting to do something else, chart -that-, and resume the interrupted task.
The problem is most likely that there is a severe shortage of medical practitioners who also speak computer above the naive user level AND who are willing to work on a medical informatics project. Hospitals keep trying to cut costs - when laws say they have to hire more nurses, which projects look like 'overhead' during budget planning?
Yeah, that sounds like a problem. I do agree that someone needs to fix it. Doctors are smart, so why shouldn't their computers be? If only we could convince hospitals that well-written medical programs would be worth the investment of time and money.
Also, I have no clue when the last time was that I actually had to hit one of the function keys for anything. They might be the only keys on this keyboard that have never been touched.. apart from that funny looking one that no one knows what it does so everyone is afraid will make the computer blow up. I think once I get off of the internet, I'll press it.
Wow, you had a Trash 80? Pretty high-brow. We had a Radio Shack Tandy Color Computer - the monitor was the television set, and the only storage was via cassette tape. I too learned to "program" on it; I could actually make the TV screen turn different colors! As I recall my siblings were not overly impressed with my new found skills...
As for the EMR - loved the rant. I suspect that you scored direct hits with several of your theories. Hospitals overall lag considerably behind industry in investment and use of both hardware and software.
Take heart - as greater numbers of cranky and aggravated computer literate physicians enter medical practice, it's bound to get better.
You are giving away your age. 
I loved the Pacers. Geez, I'd buy one today if they were still available.
Mimi
We just found out that our EMR system won't be in the ER for another two years.
As much as I adore my computer, I'm not sad about it!
Yes!
We said the same thing five years ago when we started the docations project.
We are done with our EMR now.
It is was we need.
We are moving towards fully commercial operations in January.
Take a look at our website
www.doctations.com.
Lou Cornacchia
Patient? What patient? Where's the patient button?
I applaude Dr. Cornacchia and Doctations. As a patient of a doctor using the Doctations Interner enabled digital medical record, I use the patient portal call myDocandI.com. It contains a secure record that I inputted of my past medical history, hospitalizations, medications, allergies etc. It protects me since my doctors have my up top date information and I didn't have to fill out 5 pages of info to see a specialist, I just gave him permission to access my info and he then joined the Doctations network after seeing the value it delivered to him
I use the function key every day. On the half-a$$ed version of an EMR at my current hospital. We still have paper charts, but all the labs and order entry are electronic. The reason we use the function key is because this program was designed in the 80's. And instead of upgrading it with a new program, they thought they would "improve" it with various upgrades. Dummy terminal entry is archaic, but the administration was unwilling to acknowledge all the money it wasted on worthless upgrades...
I'm not hopeful that things will be much better in private pracitice, which I will be starting all too soon. The only decent EMR I have ever seen is at the VA.
Commenting by HaloScan
