The inevitable downgrading of burdensome, destructive EHRs back to paper & document imaging

In recent days, I've posted about current articles on the destructive nature of today's vastly over-complex, burdensome EHR technology.  These posts included "Physicians Harassed by Overwhelming Levels of Messaging From Electronic Medical Records" at http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2018/01/physicians-harassed-by-onerwhelming.html
and "Medical Economics: Highly experienced physicians lost to

Burnout Returns to Center Stage

A recent Mayo Clinic Proceedings guest editorial, by Yale University physician Kristine Olson, asks the question--to some of us it's far from a rhetorical one--whether burnout among her fellow physicians is in fact "A Leading Indicator of Health System Performance?"

Seems to me that her gist is: yes, it surely must be just such an indicator. If she's right, then our system's performance is in a

Physicians Harassed by Overwhelming Levels of Messaging From Electronic Medical Records

In yet another example of the clerical overload caused by bad health IT, physicians find themselves drinking from a fire hose through cybernetics.  This, in the field of dermatology, let alone critical care specialties:


Physicians Overwhelmed by Messaging From Electronic Medical Records
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Matilda W. Nicholas, MD, PhD
Duke Dermatology
January 29, 2018https://

Medical Economics: Highly experienced physicians lost to medicine over bad health IT

The title of the article is actually "Physicians leaving profession over EHRs", but that title omits the real impact of the phenomenon: seasoned physicians, along with their medical expertise, judgment and experience, are lost to the pool of people entrusted to provide care thanks to poorly designed and badly implemented IT:



http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/
Bad Health IT

More on the Opiate Abuse Epidemic: Where Again Does the Finger Point?

In a recent blog post we pointed to conservatives' efforts to implicate Medicaid funding as somehow causative of, or at least promoting, the opiate "crisis." After all, funding for medications means people will use, and sometimes abuse, those medications. Meds they might otherwise ill be able to afford. (Implied solution: cut Medicaid.)

We also alluded to some of the logical fallacies in such

Not just bad health IT, but SPECTACULARLY bad health IT

I define bad healthcare IT as:

... IT that is ill-suited to purpose, hard to use, unreliable, loses data or provides incorrect data, is difficult and/or prohibitively expensive to customize to the needs of different medical specialists and subspecialists, causes cognitive overload, slows rather than facilitates users, lacks appropriate alerts, creates the need for hypervigilance (i.e., towards

Will the New Conscience and Religious Freedom Division of the US Department of Health and Human Services Help Health Care Professionals Challenge Morally Objectionable Acts - Like Bribery, Fraud and Other Criminal or Corrupt Practices?

For a long time we have argued that health care corruption is a major cause of health care dysfunction.  We have documented numerous cases in which health care professionals were exposed to or involved in actions, including fraud, bribery (also known as kickbacks), and other corrupt or criminal practices, to which they likely had moral objections.  We have also noted that in such situations,

Big Bang Theory of Health Care: Ever Since 1967

Hold on to your hat: it all comes together now. Looking at events in our nation's capital, in a strange fever dream, The Big Bang Theory just came to me. No, call it the Big Fecal-Bang Theory, as I read about how our national leadership proceeds from one inanity to the next.

But when it comes to health care, and wiping out the safety net using false premises, inanity kills. So this is worth

"Hot Spot For User Entry Error": Hawaii missile alert: How one employee ‘pushed the wrong button’ and caused a wave of panic

A short post.

I believe this WaPo story vividly demonstrates issues I've
seen in what Australian colleague Dr. Jon Patrick & I call "bad health IT." 

We came up with the simple-to-comprehend terminology "Good health IT/Bad health IT" in his living room in Sydney after my presentation to the Health Informatics Society of Australia in 2012 on health IT trust (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2012/

How To Challenge Health Care Corruption Under a Corrupt Regime?

Introduction: the Corruption of Health Care Leadership as a Major Cause of Health Care Dysfunction

For a long time we have argued that health care corruption is a major cause of health care dysfunction.  As we wrote in August, 2017, Transparency International (TI) defines corruption as


Abuse of entrusted power for private gain

In 2006, TI published a report
on health care corruption, which

Ill-Informed, Incompetent* Health Care Leadership: the Case of President Trump's Interview in the New York Times

[* - see discussion of definitions below]

On December 28, 2017, the New York Times published an impromptu interview by reporter Michael S Schmidt with President Donald J Trump at one of Mr Trump's private golf clubs.  Excerpts from the transcript appeared here.  An analysis of 24 points made by the president appeared in the Washington Post.  A number of commenators later weighed in on the

A Remedy for Corruption

Do I really have a remedy for corruption? I wish I did. But,
I have lately found an effective balm for the sickening discouragement that it
is easy to feel when confronted day after day with another instance of the medical
industry’s price-gouging corruption, purposeful distortions, and callous
disregard of patient  welfare. That
remedy is a new podcast from Australia: Ray Moynihan’s The